The muffled electric bell on his table drubbed out its summons.  One swift glance at the clock and the lawyer yielded to professional instinct.  He became absorbed in the papers neatly spread out on his table as a bespectacled clerk thrust open the door.

“Miss McDonald to see you,” he announced, in the modulated tone which was part of his professional make-up.

The lawyer rose at once.  He moved toward the door with a smiling welcome.  The sex and personality of his visitor demanded this departure from his custom.

Nancy McDonald stood just inside the doorway through which the clerk had departed.  She was tall, beautifully tall, for all she was only sixteen.  In her simple college girl’s overcoat, with its muffling of fur about the neck, it was impossible to detect the graces of the youthful figure concealed.  Her carriage was upright, and her bearing full of that confidence which is so earnestly taught in the schools of the newer countries.

But these things passed unnoticed by the white-haired lawyer.  He was smiling into the radiant face under the low-pressed fur cap.  It was the wide, hazel eyes, so deeply fringed with a wealth of curling, dark lashes, that inspired his smiling interest.  It was the level brows, so delicately pencilled, and dark as were the eyelashes.  It was the perfect nose, and lips, and chin, and the chiselled beauty of oval cheeks, all in such classic harmony with the girl’s wealth of vivid hair.

Nancy returned his gaze without the shadow of a smile.  She had come at this man’s call from the coldly correct halls of Marypoint College, which was also the soulless home she had been condemned to for the three or four most impressionable years of her life.  And she knew the purpose of the summons.

There was a deep abiding resentment in her heart.  It was not against this man or his wife.  From these two she had received only kindness and affection.  It was directed against the stepfather whom she believed to be the cause of the banishment she had had to endure.  Furthermore, she could never forget that her banishment was only terminated that she might gaze at last upon the dead features of her dearly loved mother before the cold earth hid them from view forever.

The lawyer understood.  He had understood from her reply to his letter summoning her.  There was no need for the confirmation he read now in her unsmiling eyes.

“You sent for me?” she said.

Nancy’s voice was deep and rich for all her youth.  Then with a display of some slight confusion, she suddenly realised the welcoming hand outheld.  She took it hurriedly, and the brief hand clasp completely broke down the barrier she had deliberately set up.