cigars, and tried to read a Sunday paper on the porch. His old nervous
feeling had him in its grasp. Try as he would to banish them, the
things Saunders had told him swept like hot streams through his veins.
Mitchell had doubled his fortune; Irene was now a richer heiress than
ever; Delbridge was in great luck; and a shallow-pated woman, whom
Mostyn both feared and despised, was threatening him with exposure.
Mitchell, and other men of the old regime, laughed at the follies of
youth, it was true, but a public scandal which would cripple business
was a different matter in any man's eyes. Besides, the old man must be
told of his intention to marry Dolly, and that surely would be the
last straw, for all of Mitchell's intimate friends knew that the
garrulous old man was counting on quite another alliance.

Mostyn heard the voices of the Drakes down the road, and to avoid them
he went up to his room, and from a window saw them enter the gate. How
wonderfully beautiful Dolly seemed as she walked by her mother! The
girl was happy, too, as her smile showed. The others came into the
house, but Dolly turned aside to a bed of flowers to gather some roses
for the dinner-table. Bitterly he reproached himself. He had won her
heart--there was no doubt of it; she was his--soul and body she was
his, and with his last breath he would stand to her. From that day
forth, in justice to her, he would cleanse his life of past impurities
and be a new man. Delbridge, Mitchell, Henderson, Marie Winship--all
of them--would be wiped out of consideration. He would get rid of
Marie first of all. He would force her to be reasonable. He had made
her no actual promises. She had known all along what to expect from
him, and her present method was unfair in every way. He had paid her
for her favors, and for aught he knew other men had done the same.
However, that did not lessen the woman's power. She might even make
trouble before he got back to Atlanta--there was no counting on what a