“Don’t you think Ferdy has changed since he was a boy?” she demanded after a moment’s reflection.

“How do you mean?” Keith was feeling very uncomfortable, and, to save himself an answer, plunged along: 

“Of course he has changed.”  He did not say how, nor did he give Mrs. Wentworth time to explain herself.  “I will tell you one thing, though,” he said earnestly:  “he never was worthy to loose the latchet of your husband’s shoe.”

Mrs. Wentworth’s face changed again; she glanced down for a second, and then said: 

“You and Norman have a mutual admiration society.”

“We have been friends a long time,” said Keith, thoughtfully.

“But even that does not always count for so much.  Friendships seem so easily broken these days.”

“Because there are so few Norman Wentworths.  That man is blessed who has such a friend,” said the young man, earnestly.

Mrs. Wentworth looked at him with a curious light in her eyes, and as she gazed her face grew more thoughtful.  Then, as Norman reappeared she changed the subject abruptly.

After dinner, while they were smoking, Norman made Keith tell him of his coal-lands and the business that had brought him to New York.  To Keith’s surprise, he seemed to know something of it already.

“You should have come to me at first,” he said.  “I might, at least, have been able to counteract somewhat the adverse influence that has been working against you.”  His brow clouded a little.

“Wickersham appears to be quite a personage here.  I wonder he has not been found out,” said Keith after a little reverie.

Norman shifted slightly in his chair.  “Oh, he is not worth bothering about.  Give me your lay-out now.”

Keith put him in possession of the facts, and he became deeply interested.  He had, indeed, a dual motive:  one of friendship for Keith; the other he as yet hardly confessed even to himself.

The next day Keith met Norman by appointment and gave him his papers.  And a day or two afterwards he met a number of his friends at lunch.

They were capitalists and, if General Keith’s old dictum, that gentlemen never discussed money at table, was sound, they would scarcely have met his requirement; for the talk was almost entirely of money.  When they rose from the table, Keith, as he afterwards told Norman, felt like a squeezed orange.  The friendliest man to him was Mr. Yorke, whom Keith found to be a jovial, sensible little man with kindly blue eyes and a humorous mouth.  His chief cross-examiner was a Mr. Kestrel, a narrow-faced, parchment-skinned man with a thin white moustache that looked as if it had led a starved existence on his bloodless lip.

“Those people down there are opposed to progress,” he said, buttoning up his pockets in a way he had, as if he were afraid of having them picked.  “I guess the Wickershams have found that out.  I don’t see any money in it.”