For several years Jefferson Edwardes had been in control of that branch of his firm’s business which operated from St. Petersburg.  Now he was returning to New York to take up larger affairs.  An uncle’s death had necessitated his personal supervision of the home office.

He had heard that Mary Burton was in Naples and had decided to break his own journey there in the hope of meeting her—­and perhaps returning on the same steamer.  Now he learned that once more he was too late.

But what annoyed the young millionaire more poignantly was the thinly veiled hint that the Duke de Metuan had also sailed for America as one of her fellow-passengers.

The whimsical little laughter wrinkles about Edwardes’ eyes radiated from twinkling pupils as he calmly asked himself what concern this was of his; this news of a woman he had never known except once long ago in a world of abandoned farms.  But the laughter died quickly, because, absurd as it was by all practical standards, he knew that he had let his dream become too important for abandonment without the test of renewed acquaintanceship.  He resented the Duke de Metuan.  He was not unfamiliar with Continental affairs and some of the nobleman’s financial troubles had sought solution through his banking house.  Of course, the Mary Burton of his dreams might have no existence in reality.  This woman had had ample opportunity to be spoiled—­but if she had not been—­There he broke off and took a long breath.  If the girl’s heart had worthy kinship with her beauty, she would be a miracle worth following over seas.  At all events, he was sailing tomorrow and her world would also be his.  It would not be difficult to learn the truth.

CHAPTER VIII

When he had stepped from the car to the sidewalk, Hamilton Burton stood there for a while in apparent abstraction.  A private policeman in cadet gray waited deferentially with his hand on the knob of the grilled bronze door which gave entrance to the office building.  Burton’s eyes were resting on Paul’s face, but the pupils were focused for no such circumscribed range.  Their vistas were of the future and empire-wide.  The fire that had wakened in them with the pronunciamento, “Above me there shall be no one,” lingered and the smile which hovered on the lips held a certain grimness in its curve.  It was not a reassuring smile for such interests as ran counter to his own.  A passing reporter who fancied himself wise in the lore of the Street, halted to observe, and muttered to himself, “Ursus Major wearing his fighting face!  This may prove a day worth watching.”

A floor representative of a brokerage office caught the expression, too, and into his memory came flooding the events of another day when this same man, wearing the same smile, hurled himself upon the Stock-Exchange, in a bear raid which had cost bull millions.