standards to be venerable; and, though most of the ground originally
about it had long ago been sold off in building-lots, enough remained to
give an impression of ample outdoor space. Against the blue of the
October morning sky the house, with its dignified Georgian lines, was
not without a certain stateliness--rectangular, three-storied, mellow,
with buff walls, buff chimneys, white doorways, white casements, white
verandas, a white balustrade around the top, and a white urn at each of
the four corners. Where, as over the verandas, there was a bit of
inclined roof, russet-red tiles gave a warmer touch of color. From the
borders of the lawn, edged with a line of shrubs, the town of Waverton,
merging into Cambridge, just now a stretch of crimson-and-orange
woodland, where gables, spires, and towers peeped above the trees,
sloped gently to the ribbon of the Charles. Far away, and dim in the
morning haze, the roofed and steepled crest of Beacon Hill rose in
successive ridges, to cast up from its highest point the gilded dome of
the State House as culmination to the sky-line. Guion looked long and
hard, first at the house, then at the prospect. He walked on only when
he remembered that he must reserve his forces for the day's
possibilities, that he must not drain himself of emotion in advance. If
what he expected were to come to pass, the first essential to his
playing the man at all would lie in his keeping cool.

So, on reaching his office, he brought all his knowledge of the world
into play, to appear without undue self-consciousness before his
stenographer, his bookkeeper, and his clerks. The ordeal was the more
severe because of his belief that they were conversant with the state of
his affairs. At least they knew enough to be sorry for him--of that he
was sure; though there was nothing on this particular morning to display
the sympathy, unless it was the stenographer's smile as he passed her in
the anteroom, and the three small yellow chrysanthemums she had placed