Even with his luck, energy, and ambition, while everything was possible, nothing was secure.

It seemed, therefore, as if the soulless official must eventually assume the duties of the two sympathizing friends who had originated them, and had stood in loco parentis to the constructive orphan.

The mother, Mrs.Howard, had disappeared a year after the Trust had been made--it was charitably presumed in order to prevent any complications that might arise from her presence in the country.

With these facts before him, Paul Hathaway was more concerned in wondering what Pendleton could want with him than, I fear, any direct sympathy with the situation.

On the contrary, it appeared to him more favorable for keeping the secret of Mrs.Howard's relationship, which would now die with Colonel Pendleton and himself; and there was no danger of any emotional betrayal of it in the cold official administration of a man who had received the Trust through the formal hands of successive predecessors.