felt that one of his motives and one of his rewards had
perished together.

The interview that took place in his office between him and his son was
one which left its visible stamp on the older man, and for a time
appeared to have had an effect even on the younger, with all his
insolence and impervious selfishness. When Aaron Wickersham unlocked his
private door and allowed his son and heir to go out, the clerks in the
outer office knew by the young man's face, quite as well as by the
rumbles of thunder which had come through the fast-closed door, that
the "old man" had been giving the young one a piece of his mind.

At first the younger man had been inclined to rebel; but for once in his
life he found that he had passed the limit of license, and his father,
whom he had rather despised as foolishly pliable, was unexpectedly his
master. He laid before Ferdy, with a power which the latter could not
but acknowledge, the selfishness and brutality of his conduct since he
was a boy. He told him of his own earlier privations, of his labors, of
his ambitions.

"I have worked my heart out," he said, "for your mother and for you. I
have never known a moment of rest or of what you call 'fun.' I set it
before me when your mother promised to marry me that I would make her as
good as the first lady in the land--that is, in New York. She should
have as big a house and as fine a carriage and as handsome frocks as any
one of them--as old Mrs. Wentworth or old Mrs. Brooke of Brookford, who
were the biggest people I ever knew. And I have spent my life for it. I
have grown old before my time. I have gotten so that things have lost
their taste to me; I have done things that I never dreamed I would do to
accomplish it. I have lost the power to sleep working for it, and when