"The same old Keith! You must remember how many swindlers they have to deal with, my boy. It is natural that they should require a guarantee--I mean an introduction of some kind. You remember what one of them said not long ago? 'A man spends one part of his life making a fortune and the rest of it trying to keep others from stealing it from him.' You ought to have come to me. You must come and dine with me this evening, and we will talk it over. Perhaps, I can help you. I want to show you my little home, and I have the finest boy in the world."
At the tone of cordial sincerity in his voice, Keith softened. He laid his hand on the back of Norman's and closed it tightly.
"I knew I could always count on you, and I meant, of course, to come and see you. The reason I have not come before I will explain to you sometime. I was feeling a little sore over a matter--sheer lies that some one has written." He shook the newspaper in his hand.
"Oh, don't mind that paper," said Norman. "The columns of that paper are for hire. They belong at present to an old acquaintance of ours. They do me the honor to pay their compliments to my affairs now and then."
Keith walked up the street with a warm feeling about his heart. That friendly face and kindly pressure of the hand had cheered him like sunshine in a wintry day, and transformed the cold, cheerless city into an abode of life and happiness. The crowds that thronged by him once more took on interest for him. The faces once more softened into human fellowship.
That evening, when Keith arrived at Norman Wentworth's, he found that what he had termed his "little house" was, in fact, a very ample and commodious mansion on one of the most fashionable avenues in the city. Outside there was nothing to distinguish it particularly from the scores of other handsome houses that stretched for blocks up and down the street with ever-recurrent brown-stone monotony. They were as much alike as so many box-stalls in a stable.
"If I had to live in one of these," thought Keith, as he was making his way to keep his appointment, "I should have to begin and count my house from the corner. No wonder the people are all so much alike!"
Inside, however, the personal taste of the owner counted for much more, and when Keith was admitted by the velvety-stepped servant, he found himself in a scene of luxury for which nothing that Norman had said had prepared him.
A hall, rather contracted, but sumptuous in its furnishings, opened on a series of drawing-rooms absolutely splendid with gilt and satin. One room, all gold and yellow, led into another all blue satin, and that into one where the light filtered through soft-tinted shades on tapestries and rugs of deep crimson.
Keith could not help thinking what a fortunate man Norman was, and the difference between his friend's situation in this bower of roses, and his own in his square, bare little box on the windy mountain-side, insensibly flashed over him. This was "an establishment"! How unequally Fortune scattered her gifts! Just then, with a soft rustle of silk, the portières were parted, and Mrs. Wentworth appeared. She paused for a second just under the arch, and the young man wondered if she knew how effective she was. She was a vision of lace and loveliness. A figure straight and sinuous, above the middle height, which would have been quite perfect but for being slightly too full, and which struck one before one looked at the face; coloring that was rich to brilliance; abundant, beautiful hair with a glint of lustre on it; deep hazel eyes, the least bit too close together, and features that were good and only just missed being fine Keith had remembered her as beautiful, but as Mrs. Wentworth stood beneath the azure portières, her long, bare arms outstretched, her lips parted in a half-smile of welcome, she was much more striking-looking than Keith's memory had recorded. As he gazed on her, the expression on his face testified his admiration.