"But I must get money somehow," he told himself.
At last he was dressed, and then he peered out into the hallway.
The agent had really gone, and satisfied on this point Homer Bulson left the residence for a stroll on Fifth Avenue.
This occupied over an hour, and then he walked over to one of the clubs to which he was attached, where he dined in the best of style.
After dinner came a game or two of billiards, and then he took a cab to his uncle's mansion near the Park.
He found Mark Horton seated in an invalid's chair in the library, and nearby was Gertrude trying her best to make the elderly man comfortable.
Evidently the elderly man was in a bad humor, for his eyes flashed angrily as the nephew entered.
The trouble was Mark Horton and his niece Gertrude had had something of a quarrel. The invalid wished Gertrude to marry her cousin Homer, and the girl did not desire the match, for she realized what a spendthrift and generally worthless fellow Bulson was.
Both knew that their uncle had made a will leaving his property divided equally between them, and Gertrude was almost certain that Bulson wished to marry her simply in order to gain control of everything.
The girl hated very much to displease her uncle, for she realized what troubles he had had in the past. A fearful railroad accident had deprived the man of his beloved wife years before, and shortly after this happening other trials had come to him, which had broken him down completely. What these trials were will be revealed as our story progresses.