“Yes. He's the president of this bank.”'
He opened a door in the partition, and leaving Cynthia dangling her feet from a chair, Wetherell was ushered, not without trepidation, into the great man's office, and found himself at last in the presence of Mr. Isaac D. Worthington, who used to wander up and down Coniston Water searching for a mill site.
He sat behind a table covered with green leather, on which papers were laid with elaborate neatness, and he wore a double-breasted skirted coat of black, with braided lapels, a dark purple blanket cravat with a large red cameo pin. And Mr. Worthington's features harmonized perfectly with this costume—those of a successful, ambitious man who followed custom and convention blindly; clean-shaven, save for reddish chops, blue eyes of extreme keenness, and thin-upped mouth which had been tightening year by year as the output of the Worthington Minx increased.
“Well, sir,” he said sharply, “what can I do for you?”
“I am William Wetherell, the storekeeper at Coniston.”
“Not the Wetherell who married Cynthia Ware!”
No, Mr. Worthington did not say that. He did not know that Cynthia Ware was married, or alive or dead, and—let it be confessed at once—he did not care.
This is what he did say:—
“Wetherell—Wetherell. Oh, yes, you've come about that note—the mortgage on the store at Coniston.” He stared at William Wetherell, drummed with his fingers on the table, and smiled slightly. “I am happy to say that the Brampton Bank does not own this note any longer. If we did,—merely as a matter of business, you understand” (he coughed),—“we should have had to foreclose.”
“Don't own the note!” exclaimed Wetherell. “Who does own it?”