"Wait!" said Mrs. Marvin. "What does all this concern us, sir? Are you not doing wrong to talk to strangers about your father's business?"
A smile passed over the young man's features, and he turned toward Faith with a glance of admiration.
"I think not," he said shortly, "and for this simple reason—he admires your daughter above any girl that he has met; she has influenced him in the past and can influence him again in the future. And he is sadly in need of influence, I can assure you," he continued, "for, at the present moment, he is on the verge of two things, they are the verge of bankruptcy and the verge of insanity!"
Mrs. Marvin looked shocked, but Faith's brow became clearer. It was coming to her now what was troubling young Denton.
The young man went on with hardly a perceptible pause, his face growing more handsome and manly as he became interested and excited.
"My father to-day is worth a million dollars, a large percentage of it having been made in his present business. He is prominent both in social and business circles, and up to the present his ability has never been questioned. To-day he has changed all this as far as it is possible to change it in the short period of a week. He is making arrangements to transact his business on what he calls a 'religious basis,' which means that he intends to transact worldly affairs by heavenly methods, and it does not take much intelligence to see where he will terminate. He will be a bankrupt in five years, if he isn't sooner, for no fortune in the world would float such an enterprise. Now, I can't see this go on without making an effort to stop it, but as I have little or no influence with him myself, I have come to Miss Marvin to ask her to help me."
"What do you wish my daughter to do?" Mrs. Marvin asked the question with a little amusement.
"I hardly know," was his honest answer, "but if she could just induce him to think that God did not expect such a sacrifice and that it was only necessary to do good in moderation, it might act as a restraint on his wholesale generosity, put a brake, so to speak, on his downward course to failure."
"But I think it an upward course to victory!" said Faith with enthusiasm. "And you have no idea how I honor your father for taking it! Just think, Mr. Denton, what good his money can do! Why, it is a duty which he owes by right to God, for who else gave him the ability to make all this money?"
"Do you think God gave it to him?" asked Mr. Denton, quickly. "Well, I should have said that his most successful methods were invented by the devil!"