This girl who came into our office that July Saturday, just in time to interfere with the outing Bob Brownley and I had laid out, and who was destined to divert my chum’s heretofore smooth-flowing river of existence and turn it into an alternation of roaring rushes and deadly calms, was truly the most exquisite creature one could conceive of, I know my thought must have been Bob’s too, for his eyes were riveted on her face.  She dropped the black lashes like a veil as she went on: 

“Mr. Brownley, I have just come from Sands Landing.  I am very anxious to talk with you on a business matter.  I have brought a letter to you from my father.  If you have other engagements I can wait until Monday, although,” and the black veiling lashes lifted, showing the half-laughing, half-pathetic eyes, “I wanted much to lay my business before you at the earliest minute possible.”

There was a faint touch of appeal in the charming voice as she spoke that was irresistible, and we were both willing to forget we had lunch waiting us on the Tribesman.

“Step into my office, Miss Sands, and all my time is yours,” said Bob, as he opened the door between his office and mine.  After I had sent a note to my wife, saying we might be delayed for an hour or two, I settled down to wait for Bob in the general office, and it was a long wait.  Thirty minutes went into an hour and an hour into two before Bob and Miss Sands came out.  After he had put her in a cab for her hotel, he said in a tone curiously intent:  “Jim, I have got to talk with you, got to get some of your good advice.  Suppose we hustle along to the yacht and after lunch you tell Kate we have some business to go over.  I don’t want to keep that girl waiting any longer than possible for an answer I cannot give until I get your ideas.”  After lunch, on the bow end of the upper deck Bob relieved himself.  Relieved is the word, for from the minute he had put Miss Sands into the carriage until then, it was evident even to my wife that his thoughts were anywhere but upon our outing.

“Jim,” he began in a voice that shook in spite of his efforts to make it sound calm, “there is no disguising the fact that I am mightily worked up about this matter, and I want to do everything possible for this girl.  No need of my telling you how sacred we have got to keep what she has just let me into.  You’ll see as I go along that it is sacred, and I know you will look at it as I do.  Miss Sands must be helped out of her trouble.

“Judge Lee Sands, her father, is the head of the old Sands family of Virginia.  The Virginia Sands don’t take off their bonnets to another family in this country, or elsewhere, for that matter, for anything that really counts.  They have had brains, learning, money, and fixed position since Virginia was first settled.  They are the best people of our State.  It is a cross-road saying in Virginia that a Sands of Sands Landing can go to the bench, the United States Senate, the House, or