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 train on the way home from Harvard would have denied it emphatically.

The day was over; it was time to go home—home to his wife in their hotel rooms and tell her how he had started work.

He recollected how at Tryston, she had told him of Anaconda, in which she owned stock, but she hadn't the slightest idea where Anaconda was, she had said; and Jay wondered if she knew for certain what it was—a mine or a snake farm. But she knew exactly where to find it on the ticker.

She would sell out, or some one would sell out for her, the instant an attack endangered the stock. She would call any one crazy who held on for sentiment and offered to fight for the company, instead of selling as swiftly as a broker could offer her shares. Then she would buy, with total lack of sentiment, stock in a railroad or a bakery or a cement plant, well located on the ticker.

Lida certainly was not sentimental when money was at stake. That was New York in her.

He found her dressed for dinner, with white shoulders, white arms, white cheeks and red, red lips.

"Dinner is at six-thirty," she informed him, coolly. "We are expected at six."

"Father phoned you?" asked Jay.

"Some one 'speaking for Mr. Rountree, quoted Lida, and Jay recognized the mimicry of Ellen's restrained, quiet voice.

"Oh, she talked to you," he said and quickly added, glancing at his wife's décolleté: "It's a family dinner."