“Why not the time, John?” asked Richard, smiling mischievously.
“Because, my boy,” and Fenton spoke like a man driven to the wall, “I’m going up-town to call on Miss Van Vleck.”
Richard laughed outright.
“No wonder,” he cried, “that you can’t explain your present position.”
Richard found himself alone in the room, and, lighting a fresh cigar, reseated himself before the fire.
“It was heroic treatment,” he mused, “but it’s the only course to pursue with such a man as John Fenton.”
Then he fell to thinking of Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, and the hours flew by.
CHAPTER XI.
Buchanan Budd had been doing a good deal of deep thinking of late—proof positive that the times were out of joint. Budd, of course, was obliged to do more or less thinking in order to be always correctly dressed, but it was only a great crisis that could compel him to ponder really weighty problems for any length of time.