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“Cards, and betting–and the hopeless optimism of youth,” said she.

“And you wish to lend him five thousand dollars, and your interest in him is platonic?”

“Nothing so ardent,” said she demurely. “I wish him to pay his debts, to give me his word that he will neither drink nor gamble until he has paid back the debt to me, and I shall suggest that he go out to one of those big Western States and become a man.”

“If anybody,” said Mr. Hemingway with gallantry, “could lead a young gentleman to so sweeping a reform, it would be yourself.”

“There is no sequence of generations,” said Miss Tennant, “long enough to eradicate a drop of Irish blood.”

Mr. Hemingway swept the jewels together and wrapped them in the tissue-paper in which she had brought them.

“Are you going to put them in your safe–or return them to me?” she asked plaintively.

Mr. Hemingway affected gruffness.

“I am thanking God fervently, ma’am,” said he, “that you didn’t ask me for more. You’ll have to give me your note. By the way, are you of age?”

Her charming eyes narrowed, and she laughed at him.

“People,” she said, “are already beginning to say, ‘she will hardly marry now.’ But it’s how old we feel, Mr. Hemingway, isn’t it?”

“I feel about seven,” said he, “and foolish at that.”

“And I,” said she, “will be twenty-five for the second time on my next birthday.”

“And, by the way,” she said, when the details of the loan had been arranged and she had stuffed the five thousand dollars into the palm of a wash glove, “nobody must know about this, because I shall have to say that–my gewgaws have been stolen.”

“But that will give Aiken a black eye,” said he.

“I’m afraid it can’t be helped, Mr. Hemingway. Papa will ask point-blank why I never wear the pearls he gave me, and I shall have to anticipate.”

“How?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said demurely, “to-night or to-morrow night I shall rouse the household with screams, and claim that I woke and saw a man bending over my dressing-table–a man with a beautiful white mustache and imperial.”

Mr. Hemingway’s right hand flew to his mouth as if to hide these well-ordered appendages, and he laughed.

“Is the truth nothing to you?” he said.

“In a business matter pure and simple,” she said, after a moment’s reflection, “it is nothing–absolutely nothing.”

“Not being found out by one’s parents is hardly a business matter,” said Mr. Hemingway.

“Oh,” said she with a shiver, “as a little girl I went into the hands of a receiver at least once a month—-“

“A hand of iron in a velvet glove,” murmured Mr. Hemingway.

“Oh, no,” she said, “a leather slipper in a nervous hand…. But how can I thank you?”

She rose, still demure and cool, but with a strong sparkling in her eyes as from a difficult matter successfully adjusted.

“You could make the burglar a clean-shaven man,” Mr. Hemingway suggested.

“I will,” she said. “I will make him look like anybody you say.”

“God forbid,” said he. “I have no enemies. But, seriously, Miss Tennant, if you possibly can, will you do without a burglary, for the good name of Aiken?”

“I will do what I can,” she said, “but I can’t make promises.”

When she had gone, one of the directors pushed open the door of Mr. Hemingway’s office and tiptoed in.

“Well,” said he, “for an old graybeard! You’ve been flirting fifty minutes, you sinner.”

“I haven’t,” said Mr. Hemingway, twisting his mustache and looking roguish. “I’ve been discussing a little matter of business with Miss Tennant.”

“What business?”

“Well, it wasn’t any of yours, Frank, at the time, and I’m dinned if I think it is now. But if you must know, she came in to complain of the milk that your dairy has been supplying lately. She said it was the kind of thing you’d expect in the North, but for a Southern gentleman to put water in anything—-“

“You go to Augusta,” said the director (it is several degrees hotter than Aiken). “Everybody knows that spoons stand up in the milk from my dairy, and as for the cream—-“