Chapter 9

IX.

NELSON VANDERLYN, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the
threshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with
pardonable satisfaction.

He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious
eyes and a large and credulous smile.

At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford
and Nick Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair,
Clarissa throned in infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a
peach for her. Through wide orange awnings the sun slanted in
upon the white-clad group.

"Well--well--well! So I've caught you at it!" cried the happy
father, whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and
friends as if he had surprised them at an inopportune moment.
Stealing up from behind, he lifted his daughter into the air,
while a chorus of "Hello, old Nelson," hailed his appearance.

It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr.
Vanderlyn, who was now the London representative of the big New
York bank of Vanderlyn & Co., and had exchanged his sumptuous
house in Fifth Avenue for another, more sumptuous still, in
Mayfair; and the young man looked curiously and attentively at
his host.

Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face still
kept its look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife,
greeted Susy affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-grasps
to the two men.

"Hullo," he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral
trinket hanging from Clarissa's neck. "Who's been giving my
daughter jewellery, I'd like to know!"

"Oh, Streffy did--just think, father! Because I said I'd rather
have it than a book, you know," Clarissa lucidly explained, her
arms tight about her father's neck, her beaming eyes on
Strefford.

Nelson Vanderlyn's own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which
came into them whenever there was a question of material values.

"What, Streffy? Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling
the brat like that! You'd no business to, my dear chap-a
lovely baroque pearl--" he protested, with the half-apologetic
tone of the rich man embarrassed by too costly a gift from an
impecunious friend.

"Oh, hadn't I? Why? Because it's too good for Clarissa, or too
expensive for me? Of course you daren't imply the first; and as
for me--I've had a windfall, and am blowing it in on the
ladies."

Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when
he was slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from
the main point. But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did
he wish to divert, It was plain that Vanderlyn's protest had
been merely formal: like most of the wealthy, he had only the
dimmest notion of