BILLY volunteered to take the children home, Vassar waved his farewell to the crowd and hurried to the waiting automobile.

Virginia presented him to the banker.

“Our irreconcilable foe, Mr. Waldron!”

The millionaire merely touched his hat with the barest suggestion of a military salute and Vassar bowed. It was not until they were seated in the car that Waldron spoke—the same cold smile about his lips.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Mr. Vassar—”

“I’m surprised to hear that,” was the light reply. “Our views could hardly be the same on any subject within my scope of knowledge—”

Waldron smiled patronizingly.

“Anyhow, let us hope that we’ll get together today—”

“We must,” Virginia responded.

The one thing Vassar couldn’t endure was patronage. The tone Waldron assumed was offensive beyond endurance. If he tried it again the young leader had made up his mind to find an excuse, stop the car and go back to his office.

To his relief the man of money made no further attempt at conversation, save for an occasional whispered order to his liveried chauffeur. Vassar’s eyes rested on the military cut of this chauffeur’s clothes with new resentment. The gilded coat of arms on the door of the tonneau had not escaped him as he took his seat beside Virginia. Nor was the lordly manner in which the new master of men condescended to talk with his servant at the wheel lost on the young leader of democracy.

He wondered what Virginia Holland could see in such a man. He refused utterly to believe that she could love him. Elemental brute strength and stark physical courage he undoubtedly possessed. The solid mass of his bull neck and the cold brilliance of his gray eyes left no doubt on that score.

There could be but one explanation of her association with Waldron. He had generously loosed his purse strings and given her cause the unlimited credit needed under modern conditions to conduct a great political movement. No one could blame her for that. It was good politics.

All the same he would give a good deal just now to know whether she cared for the man. He must yield the devil his due. Waldron was the type of domineering brute that appealed to many women. He wondered if Virginia Holland had felt the spell of his commanding character.

For the hundredth time he asked himself the question why should he care. There was the rub. Devil take it, he did care. He had never been so foolishly happy in his life as in the hours he had spent by this girl’s side. It infuriated him to think how easy had been his conquest. But yesterday he had scorned her name. They had met and talked a few hours and he had become her lackey. At her bidding he was now on his way to the house of the man he hated.

He caught himself grinning for sheer joy to find himself seated close beside her in the smooth gliding car of his enemy. He could have enjoyed this wonderful ride had they been alone.

The afternoon was one of glorious beauty. The rains of the first days of July had swept the city clean. The sun had broken the clouds into billowing banks of snow-white against the dazzling azure of the skies. A brisk inspiriting breeze swept in from the sea and rippled the waters of the North River into little white lines of foam. The trees along the Drive flashed in splendor.

The temptation was all but resistless to touch her hand. He started with terror at the crazy thought. She was anything but an Amazon, but he could see her pitching him headforemost into the road for daring the impertinence. He glanced at her furtively, alarmed lest she had read his thoughts.

Well, there was no help for it now. He was in for a fight for his life with this demure, quiet, dangerous little woman, who could sit calmly by his side mistress of her thoughts and no doubt perfectly conscious of her power over his.

Anyhow she was worth a fight. It was worth any man’s best to win the heart of such a woman and to make her his own. Could any man really do it? Of course he could! With the next breath he doubted it, and trembled at the happiness he felt bubbling in his soul when he felt the nearness of her exquisite figure.

“Why so grave, Mr. Congressman?” she asked banteringly.

“To tell you the truth, I’m scared,” he answered in low tones.

“Of the great man in front?” she whispered.

Vassar’s jaw closed with decision.

“Far from it, I assure you!”

“You’re not afraid of an automobile?”

“One more guess—”

“You couldn’t be afraid of little me?” she asked demurely.

“Yesterday I would have said no with a very loud emphasis. I’m free to confess the more I’ve seen of you the more I dread your opposition—”

She laughed in his face with a deliberate provoking challenge.

“Now that’s unkind of you! I expected a much more gallant answer from a tall handsome apostle of romance and chivalry.”

“Perhaps I was afraid you’d laugh at me—”

“No. I hold that the age of true chivalry is only dawning—the age in which man will honor woman by recognizing her as worthy to be his pal and best friend as well as his toy.”

There was something so genuine to the appeal of her personality that the man who intellectually disagreed with her philosophy yet found himself in foolish accord with every demand she made.

Vassar was silent a moment, and glanced at her to see if she were chaffing or sparring to uncover his defenses.

He was about to say too much—to confess too much and do it clumsily in the presence of the man he hated when the machine suddenly swung toward the cliff, swept up to a massive iron gate and stopped.

The chauffeur sounded his horn and an old man dressed in the peasant costume of the lodge-keeper of a feudal estate of Central Europe emerged from the cottage built into the walls of the cliff and opened the gates without a word. He bowed humbly to the lord of the manor. Waldron nodded carelessly.

The banker’s medieval castle, perched on the highest hill on upper Manhattan, was one of the sights of the metropolis. Vassar lifted his eyes and caught the majestic lines of the granite tower thrusting its grim embattlements into the skies. An ocean-going yacht lay at her anchor in the river like a huge swan with folded wings. The Italian boathouse which he had built at the water’s edge was connected with his castle by an underground passage bored through the granite cliff into a hall cut out of the stone a hundred feet beneath the foundations of the structure above. A swift elevator connected this hall with the house.

The machine shot gracefully up the steep winding roadway and stopped beneath the vaulted porte-cochère.

Liveried flunkies hurried down the stone landing to greet their master and his guests. There was nothing for them to do but open the door of the tonneau with obsequious bows.

“Will you kindly make our prisoner as comfortable as possible, Miss Holland,” Waldron said in his even metallic voice, “while I give some orders outside. You’ll find the library at your disposal.”

“Thank you,” Virginia answered, mounting the steps without further ceremony.

A feeling of resentment swept John Vassar. How dare this bully assume such familiarity with Virginia Holland! She had met him as a patron of the cause of woman’s suffrage. One would think he had the right to her soul and body by the way he asked her to act as the hostess of his establishment. The thought that enrage............