Back, back to the speaking silence of his lonely rooms he wandered,
to gaze through the smoke wreaths upon that picture which had so
strangely brought Irma Gluyas into his life. Gloomily recalling
the past, he went over all the brief memories of his boyhood, and
tried to recall his stern father's few confidences, or picture to
himself the mother whom he had never known. All was a gray blank
of toiling days and carking cares. And Worthington had robbed him
and made him eat the bread of dependence.

He lived now only to wreak a vengeance upon the man who had shared
his father's early speculations and deserted him in his time of need.
The ruin of Everett Clayton was now explained. And but one gracious
memory lingered with him to lighten the gloom of his dependent
boyhood.

Golden-haired Alice Worthington, the child-angel of the house,
the frank girlish little playmate, the slim, shy school girl, the
"Little Sister" of his striving college days. And now she was
doomed to be the deluded prey of a vulgar money conspiracy--sold,
body and soul.

He groaned as he thought of the deliberate sacrifice of the girl's
glorious young womanhood to the vicious ambitions of her father's
mad race for wealth and power.

"Shall I warn her?" he bitterly mused. And then all his manhood
rose up against discovering a father's shame. "Never!" he cried. "I
have eaten his bread and salt. My quarrel is with him alone! Ferris
is to be the coming bridegroom. He is like all the rest--greedy of
money and power. He will surely make her a "good husband" of the