He closed the door behind them, and the other door into the darkened dining room.  He even took a precautionary glance out of the window of the porch.  And these movements, which ordinarily might have aroused her curiosity, if not her alarm, she watched with a profound indifference.  He took a stand before the Japanese screen in front of the fireplace, thrust his hands in his pockets, cleared his throat, and surveyed her from her white shoulders to the gold-embroidered tips of her slippers.

“I’m leaving for the West in the morning, Honora.  If you’ve made any arrangements for me on Sunday, you’ll have to cancel them.  I may be gone two weeks, I may be gone a month.  I don’t know.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m going to tell you something those fellows in the smoking room to-night did their best to screw out of me.  If you say anything about it, all’s up between me and Wing.  The fact that he picked me out to engineer the thing, and that he’s going to let me in if I push it through, is a pretty good sign that he thinks something of my business ability, eh?”

“You’d better not tell me, Howard,” she said.

“You’re too clever to let it out,” he assured her; and added with a chuckle:  “If it goes through, order what you like.  Rent a house on Bellevue Avenue—­any thing in reason.”

“What is it?” she asked, with a sudden premonition that the thing had a vital significance for her.

“It’s the greatest scheme extant,” he answered with elation.  “I won’t go into details—­you wouldn’t understand’em.  Mr. Wing and some others have tried the thing before, nearer home, and it worked like a charm.  Street railways.  We buy up the little lines for nothing, and get an interest in the big ones, and sell the little lines for fifty times what they cost us, and guarantee big dividends for the big lines.”

“It sounds to me,” said Honora, slowly, “as though some one would get cheated.”

“Some one get cheated!” he exclaimed, laughing.  “Every one gets cheated, as you call it, if they haven’t enough sense to know what their property’s worth, and how to use it to the best advantage.  It’s a case,” he announced, “of the survival of the fittest.  Which reminds me that if I’m going to be fit to-morrow I’d better go to bed.  Mr. Wing’s to take me to New York on his yacht, and you’ve got to have your wits about you when you talk to the old man.”

A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill

Volume 6.

CHAPTER VI

Clio, or Thalia?