CHAPTER VIII.
IN WHICH CONSTANCE SHOWS FURTHER INTEREST IN JOHNNY'S AFFAIRS On Wednesday morning Mr.Courtney, sitting as rigidly at his desk as if he were in church, was handed the card of Morton Washer.

He laid the card face down and placed a paper-weight on it, as if he feared it might get away.

He turned a callous eye on his secretary and, in his driest and most husky tones, directed: "Tell Mr.Washer I will see him in five minutes." During that five minutes Mr.Courtney signed letters as solemnly as a judge pronouncing a death sentence.

At last he paused and looked at himself for a solid half-minute in the bookcase mirror across from his desk.

Apparently he was as mournful as an undertaker, but at the end of the inspection his mouth suddenly stretched in a wide grin, which bristled the silver-white beard upon his cheeks; his eyes screwed themselves up into knots of jovial wrinkles and he winked--actually winked--at his reflection in the glass! Thereupon he straightened his face and sent for Morton Washer.
Mr.Washer, proprietor of two of the largest hotels in New York, and half a dozen enormous winter and summer places, looked no more like a boniface than he did like a little girl on communion Sunday.