Nan received the announcement of Bivens\'s failure to settle Woodman\'s suit with a grim resolution to win now, at all hazards. The sensational reports of Stuart\'s action against the big financiers had given her quick mind the cue to a new line of stratagem. She began cautiously.

"You are not going to give up a thing I\'ve set my heart on merely because old Woodman\'s a fool, are you?" she asked her husband, with a touch of scorn. "Jim Stuart is the best friend you ever had. He has become one of the most famous men in America. He would lend distinction to our house. I want him at our next entertainment."

"The thing that puzzles me," Bivens broke in, "is why the devil he will not come to the house. When I meet him down town he\'s always friendly."

Nan\'s lips quivered with a queer little smile.

"Will he succeed in this action against these men?"

"No."

"Why?"

"He can\'t get the facts."

"If he could get them and did succeed, what would happen?"

"He\'d shake the foundations of the financial world."

"You could get the facts, couldn\'t you, dear?"

Nan spoke in the softest tones.

"I have them already."

"Why not give them to him?"

"I had thought of that—but it\'s dangerous."

"Why dangerous?"

"It might bring on a panic."

"What have you to lose by it?"

"Nothing, if I\'m wise."

"I\'ve never known anybody to call you a fool."

"A panic\'s a dangerous thing to monkey with."

"Nonsense!" Nan cried with enthusiasm. "I\'ll back you to win when the test comes."

Bivens smiled with pride.

"Yes. I could win, I think, having a little inside information about what may happen."

"Why don\'t you do it, then?"

"It\'s dangerous," Bivens repeated, thoughtfully.

"It couldn\'t injure Stuart?" his wife asked cautiously.

"No. It couldn\'t hurt him. On the other hand, I might make him the unconscious instrument of a great personal vengeance, double my fortune and possibly land Jim in the White House."

"You must do it, dear!" his wife cried, trembling with suppressed excitement. Bivens hesitated and shook his head.

"It\'s playing with dynamite."

"It\'s worth the risk to double your fortune—do it for my sake!"

Nan leaned close and pressed her husband\'s hand while her dark eyes found their way into his heart. The hard mouth smiled as he took her flushed face in his hands and kissed her.

"I\'ll do it," he said with firm accent.

"I know you\'ll win—you never fail!" she cried, "You\'ll not lose a moment?"

"No. I\'ll \'phone him at once."

Bivens called Stuart and made an appointment to meet him at the Algonquin Club for dinner two days later.

"Why two days\' delay?" Nan asked petulantly.

"It will require that time to prepare the papers. Don\'t worry. I\'ll put the thing through now."

When Stuart sat down with Bivens in one of the magnificent private dining rooms of his millionaire club two days later, he was struck with the perfection of the financier\'s dress, and the easy elegance of his manners.

"Nan has surely done wonders with some pretty crude material!" he mused.

As the meal progressed the lawyer\'s imagination continued to picture the process of training through which she had put Bivens to develop from the poor white Southerner, the polished little man of the gilded world he now saw. No flight of his fancy could imagine the real humour of it all. He recalled Nan\'s diary with grim amusement.

While Bivens had really been wax in her skillful hands since the day of her marriage, the one task she found hard was her desperate and determined effort to make him a well-groomed man. She was finally compelled to write out instructions for his daily conduct and enforce them with all sorts of threats and blandishments. She pasted this programme in Bivens\'s hat, at last, and he was in mortal terror lest some one should lift the inside band and read them. They were minute and pai............