"I don't understand," said Kent, dry-tongued.

"Don't you? Perhaps I'd better explain: she might find it a little difficult. You have been laboring under the impression that we are engaged, haven't you?"

"Laboring under the--why, good heavens, man! it's in everybody's mouth!"

"Curious, isn't it, how such things get about," commented the player of long suits. "How do you suppose they get started?"

"I don't suppose anything about it, so far as we two are concerned; I have your own word for it. You said you were the man in possession."

Ormsby laughed again.

"You are something of a bluffer yourself, David. Did you let my little stagger scare you out?"

David Kent pushed his chair back from the table and nailed Ormsby with a look that would have made a younger man betray himself.

"Do you mean to tell me that there is no engagement between you and Miss Brentwood?"

"Just that." Ormsby put all the nonchalance he could muster into the laconic reply, but he was antic.i.p.ating the sequent demand which came like a shot out of a gun.

"And there never has been?"

Ormsby grinned.

"When you are digging a well and have found your stream of water, it's folly to go deeper, David. Can't you let 'good enough' alone?"

Kent turned it over in his mind, frowning thoughtfully into his coffee-cup. When he spoke it was out of the mid-heart of manliness.

"I wish you would tell me one thing, Ormsby. Am I responsible for--for the present state of affairs?"

Ormsby stretched the truth a little; partly for Elinor's sake; more, perhaps, for Kent's.

"You have done nothing that an honorable rival--and incidentally a good friend of mine--might not do. Therefore you are not responsible."

"That is putting it very diplomatically," Kent mused. "I am afraid it does not exonerate me wholly."

"Yes, it does. But it doesn't put me out of the running, you understand.

I'm 'forninst' you yet; rather more stubbornly than before, I fancy."

Kent nodded.

"That, of course; I should think less of you if you were not. And you shall have as fair a show as you are giving me--which is saying a lot.

Shall we go and smoke?"

XXI

A WOMAN INTERVENES

It was still early in the evening when Kent mounted the steps of the Brentwood apartment house. Mother and daughters were all on the porch, but it was Mrs. Brentwood who welcomed him.

"We were just wondering if you would imagine the message which Elinor was going to send, and didn't, and come out to see what was wanted," she said.

"I am in need of a little legal advice. Will you give me a few minutes in the library?"

Kent went with her obediently, but not without wondering why she had sent for him, of all the retainable lawyers in the capital. And the wonder became amazement when she opened her confidence. She had received two letters from a New York broker who offered to buy her railroad stock at a little more than the market price. To the second letter she had replied, asking a price ten points higher than the market. At this the broker had apparently dropped the attempted negotiation, since there had been no more letters. What would Mr. Kent advise her to do--write again?

Kent smiled inwardly at the good lady's definition of "legal advice," but he rose promptly to the occasion. If he were in Mrs. Brentwood's place, he would not write again; nor would he pay any attention whatever to any similar proposals from any source. Had there been any others?

Mrs. Brentwood confessed that there had been; that a firm of Boston brokers had also written her. Did Mr. Kent know the meaning of all this anxiety to buy in Western Pacific when the stock was going down day by day?

Kent took time for reflection before he answered. It was exceedingly difficult to eliminate the personal factor in the equation. If all went well, if by due process of law the Trans-Western should be rescued out of the hands of the wreckers, the property would be a long time recovering from the wounds inflicted by the cut rates and the Guilford bad management. In consequence, any advance in the market value of the stock must be slow and uncertain under the skilfullest handling. But, while it might be advisable for Mrs. Brentwood to take what she could get, the transfer of the three thousand shares at the critical moment might be the death blow to all his hopes in the fight for retrieval.

Happily, he hit upon the expedient of shifting the responsibility for the decision to other shoulders.

"I scarcely feel competent to advise you in a matter which is personal rather than legal," he said at length. "Have you talked it over with Mr.

Ormsby?"

Mrs. Brentwood's reply was openly contemptuous.

"Brookes Ormsby doesn't know anything about dollars. You have to express it in millions before he can grasp it. He says for me not to sell at any price."

Kent shook his head.

"I shouldn't put it quite so strongly. At the same time, I am not the person to advise you."

The shrewd eyes looked up at him quickly.

"Would you mind telling me why, Mr. Kent?"

"Not in the least. I am an interested party. For weeks Mr. Loring and I have been striving by all means to prevent transfers of the stock from the hands of the original holders. I don't want to advise you to your hurt; but to tell you to sell might be to undo all that has been done."

"Then you are still hoping to get the railroad out of Major Guilford's hands?"

"Yes."

"And in that case the price of the stock will go up again?"

"That is just the difficulty. It may be a long time recovering."

"Do you think the sale of my three thousand shares would make any difference?" she asked.

"There is reason to fear that it would make all the difference."

She was silent for a time, and when she spoke again Kent realized that he was coming to know an entirely unsuspected side of Elinor's mother.

"It makes it pretty hard for me," she said slowly. "This little drib of railroad stock is all that my girls have left out of what their father willed them. I want to save it if I can."