"Pshaw! It is really useless trying that tone with me, especially as I have heard about another dispute of the kind you once had at Westminster. You're between the devil and the deep sea, but if you don't start kicking you'll get no hurt from me. Call it a deal—and, to change the subject, where's the man you sent up to worry Thurston?"
"I don't know," said Leslie. "I gave him a round sum, part of it out of my own pocket, for I couldn't in the meantime think of a suitable entry—all the directors don't agree with you. I know he started, but he has never come back again."
"Then you have got to find him," was the dry answer. "We'll have law-suits and land commissions before we're through, and if Thurston has corralled or bought that man over, and plays him at the right moment, it would certainly cost you your salary."
"I can't find him; I've tried," asserted Leslie.
"Then you had better try again and keep right on trying. Get at Thurston through his friends if you can't do it any other way. Your wife is already a figure in local society."
That night Leslie leaned against the mantelpiece in his quarters talking to his wife. They had just returned from some entertainment and Millicent, in beautiful evening dress, lay in a lounge chair watching him keenly.
"You would not like to be poor again, Millicent?" he said, fixing his glance, not upon her face but on her jeweled hands, and the woman smiled somewhat bitterly as she answered:
"Poor again! That would seem to infer that we are prosperous now. Do you know how much I owe half the stores in this city, Harry?"
"I don't want to!" said Leslie, with a gesture of impatience. "Your tastes were always extravagant, and I mean the kind of poverty which is always refused credit."
"My tastes!" and Millicent's tone was indignant. "I suppose I am fond of money, or the things that it can buy, and you may remember you once promised me plenty. But why can't you be honest and own that the display we make is part of your programme? I have grown tired of this scheming and endeavoring to thrust ourselves upon people who don't want us, and if you will be content to stay at home and progress slowly, Harry, I will gladly do my share to help you."