“I will take your card to Mr. Wingfield,” said the butler.

Prather made a perfunctory movement as if for a card-case, but apparently changed his mind under the prompting suggestion that it was superfluous.

“My name is John Prather,” he announced.  “Mr. Wingfield knows who I am and I am quite sure that he will see me.”

While the butler, after rapping cautiously, went into the library with the message, John Prather stood half smiling to himself as he looked around the hall.  The effect seemed to please him in a contemplative fashion, for he rubbed the palms of his hands together, as he had in his survey of the diamond counters.  He was serenity itself as John Wingfield, Sr. burst out of the library, his face hard-set.

“I thought you were going this evening!” he exclaimed.  “By what right do you come here?”

He placed himself directly in front of Prather, thus hiding Prather’s figure, but not his face, which Jack could see was not in the least disturbed by the other’s temper.

“Oh, no!  The early morning train has the connections I want for Arizona,” he answered casually, as if he were far from being in any hurry.  “I was taking a walk, and happening to turn into Madison Avenue I found myself in front of the house.  It occurred to me what a lot I had heard about that ancestor, and seeing a light in the library, and considering how late it was, I thought I might have a glimpse of him without inconveniencing any other member of the family.  Do you mind?”

He put the question with an inflection that was at once engaging and confident.

“Mind!” gasped John Wingfield, Sr.

“I am sure you do not!” Prather returned.  Now a certain deference and a certain pungency of satire ran together in his tone, the mixture being nicely and pleasurably controlled.  “Is it in there, in the drawing-room?”

“And then what else?  Where do you mean to end?  I thought that—­”

“Nothing else,” Prather interrupted reassuringly.  “Everything is settled, of course.  This is sort of a farewell privilege.”

“Yes, in there!” snapped John Wingfield, Sr.  “It’s the picture on the other side of the mantel.  I will wait here—­and be quick, quick, I tell you!  I want you out of this house!  I’ve done enough!  I—­”

“Thanks!  It is very good-natured of you!”

John Prather passed leisurely into the drawing-room and John Wingfield, Sr. stood guard by the door, his hand gripping the heavy portieres for support, while his gaze was steadily fixed at a point in the turn of the stairs just below where Jack was obscured in the shadow.  His face was drawn and ashen against the deep red of the hangings, and torment and fear and defiance, now one and then the other, were in ascendency over the features which Jack had always associated with composed and unchanging mastery until he had seen them illumined with affection only an hour before.  And the father had said that he had never met or heard of John Prather!  The father had said so quietly, decidedly, without hesitation!  This one thought kept repeating itself to Jack’s stunned brain as he leaned against the wall limp from a blow that admits of no aggressive return.