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 son and to succeed her, at the right time, in the management of the businesses she owned; for this reason she wished him at once to prepare himself in the School of Commerce; and much of their talk together was about his work there.

Acknowledgment of him was to be after an event which she did not describe but of which she thought constantly. Her concealment, so far maintained, remained an essential of her plans; and as the day of the event approached, she forbade him to return to her and would not be reassured by his promise to take all precautions against being followed.

She had questioned him about many matters relating to Ethel Carew and the Cullens; and he had become aware that, though his mother had determined upon definite action, yet she was waiting not only to regain more strength but for a progress of circumstances which she was observing but could not hasten. To-day Barney read in those clear, concise lines of his mother's handwriting that occurrences at last favored her; she had sufficient strength to play her part and the time—her time and his and Lucas Cullen's—had come.

Barney had received the note during one of his regular hours at the School of Commerce; so, upon leaving the university building, he took precautions to elude any one who might be observing him in Lucas Cullen's interest, and at a few minutes after four o'clock, he proceeded to Mrs. Stanton-Fielding's.

It was a warm, pleasant and sunny afternoon of April, with the dampness from the morning's rain upon the walks and streets. The grass in the parkways and upon the lawns of the Lake Shore Drive was reviving into new green; trees were bursting their buds, and the brown sheaths from the yellowing twigs littered the wet