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 "You saw the jealousy in Frank's big baby face and you stayed away—now, honestly!"

He pulled nervously at his moustache and his eye twinkled.

"That's about the size of it."

"Well, I'm not a child and you are not. We are both full grown. I am thirty-one years old. I am not Frank Gordon's slave, nor his property. I am a free woman by his own words. And I am going to be free."

Overman glanced at the door.

"Oh! You needn't try to run," she laughed. "I've got you to-day. You can't get away, and I'm going to tell you something. Can you guess what it is?"

The banker began to tremble.

Kate paused, leaned back in the easy chair she had drawn close in front of him, placed both of her dazzling arms behind her head, burying them in the mass of auburn hair, a picture of lazy tenderness and dreamy languor.

"Can't you guess?" she repeated.

"I'm not so bold as to dare," he answered, gravely.

"I will dare," she said, eagerly leaning forward and bending so close he caught the perfume of her hair.

The blood rushed in surging tumult to his face.

"When I found myself caught in that wreck," she began in slow, mellow tones, "it flashed over me that I had been leading a sham life. I, who profess freedom, had been living a slave to form. One