Montague relapsed into silence, and Oliver changed the subject.  “It seems too bad about Lucy,” he said.  “Is there nothing we can do about it?”

“Nothing,” said the other.

“She is simply ruining herself,” said Oliver.  “I’ve been trying to get Reggie Mann to have her introduced to Mrs. Devon, but he says he wouldn’t dare to take the risk.”

“No, I presume not,” said Montague.

“It’s a shame,” said Oliver.  “I thought Mrs. Billy Alden would ask her to Newport this summer, but now I don’t believe she’ll have a thing to do with her.  Lucy will find she knows nobody except Stanley Ryder and his crowd.  She has simply thrown herself away.”

Montague shrugged his shoulders.  “That’s Lucy’s way,” he said.

“I suppose she’ll have a good time,” added the other.  “Ryder is generous, at any rate.”

“I hope so,” said Montague.

“They say he’s making barrels of money,” said Oliver; then he added, longingly, “My God, I wish I had a trust company to play with!”

“Why a trust company particularly?” asked the other.

“It’s the easiest graft that’s going,” said Oliver.  “It’s some dodge or other by which they evade the banking laws, and the money comes rolling in in floods.  You’ve noticed their advertisements, I suppose?”

“I have noticed them,” said Montague.

“He is adding something over a million a month, I hear.”

“It sounds very attractive,” said the other; and added, drily, “I suppose Ryder feels as if he owned it all.”

“He might just as well own it,” was the reply.  “If I were going into Wall Street to make money, I’d rather have the control of fifty millions than the absolute ownership of ten.”

“By the way,” Oliver remarked after a moment, “the Prentices have asked Alice up to Newport.  Alice seems to be quite taken with that young chap, Curtiss.”

“He comes around a good deal,” said Montague.  “He seems a very decent fellow.”

“No doubt,” said the other.  “But he hasn’t enough money to take care of a girl like Alice.”

“Well,” he replied, “that’s a question for Alice to consider.”

CHAPTER X

One day, a month or so later, Montague, to his great surprise, received a letter from Stanley Ryder.

“Could you make it convenient to call at my office sometime this afternoon?” it read.  “I wish to talk over with you a business proposition which I believe you will find of great advantage to yourself.”

“I suppose he wants to buy my Northern Mississippi stock,” he said to himself, as he called up Ryder on the ’phone, and made an appointment.

It was the first time that he had ever been inside the building of the Gotham Trust Company, and he gazed about him at the overwhelming magnificence—­huge gates of bronze and walls of exquisite marble.  Ryder’s own office was elaborate and splendid, and he himself a picture of aristocratic elegance.