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At this Mr. Carroll pushed his chair back sharply. “My work!” he exclaimed angrily. “Who’s it for? For you, every bit of it! For you and Julie.”

After all, Stacey was young and had a sense of the ridiculous; so laughter surged up within him now and, though he kept it silent, relieved his tensity. For he was earning a respectable salary from the firm of architects in which he would soon have a junior partnership, and his father had long since given him two-hundred-thousand dollars’ worth of excellent municipal and industrial bonds, some bearing five, some five-and-a-half per cent.; while, as for his sister Julie, she not only had a strictly equal private fortune, but was also comfortably married to a prosperous young lawyer. But, knowing his father, and knowing him better than usual to-day, Stacey carefully kept his amusement to himself.

It vanished anyway when his father added: “And Marian?”—and Stacey winced.

“I haven’t told her yet. I’m going to tell her to-night,” he said, a little hoarsely. “It’ll almost break her heart, I’m afraid. All the Marians in the world are having their hearts broken to-day.”