CHAPTER III.
STORM CLOUDS Mr.Phineas Duge, since the death of his wife, had closed his doors to all his friends, and entertained only on rare occasions a few of the men with whom he was connected in his many business enterprises.

On the arrival of Virginia, however, he lifted his finger, and Society stormed at his doors.

The great reception rooms were thrown open, the servants were provided with new liveries, an entertainment office was given carte blanche to engage the usual run of foreign singers and the best known mountebanks of the moment.

Mrs.Trevor Harrison, the woman whom he had selected as chaperon for Virginia, more than once displayed some curiosity, when talking to her charge, as to this sudden change in the habits of a man whose lack of sociability had become almost proverbial.
"If it were not, my dear," she said one day to Virginia, when they were having tea together in her own more modest apartment, "that I firmly believe your uncle incapable of any affection for any one, we should all have to believe that he had lost his heart to you." Virginia, who had heard other remarks of the same nature, looked puzzled.
"I cannot see," she exclaimed, "why every one speaks of my uncle as a heartless person.

I do not think that I ever met any one more kind, and he looks it, too.