“Run your car off to one side where it won’t interfere with the traffic.” The financier ordered Leslie about precisely as he might have ordered one of his men. His tones reached her, coldly concise, entirely devoid of affection. “There, that will do.” He skillfully manipulated the racer to a point parallel with her car, but out of the way of passing automobiles.

“What do you want?” Leslie inquired with sulky coolness.

“What are you doing here?” sternly countered her father.

“Nothing. You took away my job.”

“A good thing I did. I ordered you to stay in New York. Why are you not there? Why didn’t you obey me? You’re courting business college, it would seem.”

“Things are not always what they seem,” Leslie came back laconically.

The financier set his lips anew. It was either that or smile. Leslie was regarding him with the curiously unafraid expression which had most amused him in her as a child.

“Why can’t you behave properly?” he demanded with vexed displeasure.

“I don’t know. I have been trying to find that out for myself lately. It’s a hard job, Peter.” She purposely called him Peter. It had been another of her laughable childish mannerisms.

It brought a smile, reluctant and fleeting to his face. An odd light burned in his eyes for an instant. He turned his head to avoid her penetrating gaze. He had never before heard Leslie make an allusion to self-analysis. The knowledge that she had begun to try to fathom her forward motives was encouraging.

“What mischief have you done since you came up here?” he next asked. “Why could not you have cultivated Natalie instead of racing over the country up here in a car?”

“Nat is going to be married to a monocle and an English title. She is hopeless. I couldn’t stand her. I fled to the country, Peter. I knew you wouldn’t wish to have me die of being bored. Don’t rag Gaylord for it. I made her come here. She’s a good, ladylike sport, who knows how to stick to me and yet mind her own affairs. You may think you picked her for me. No, no; I saw her first. That gives me a prior claim to bossing her. I’m glad I met you, if only to settle that little point in your mind.” Leslie’s hands busied themselves with the wheel. “I think I’ll go on,” she declared tranquilly. “Don’t worry, Peter, I won’t do anything more to disgrace you. I’m going to lead a noble life from now on.”

She was fighting desperately to maintain humorous indifference. It was the side of her character which Peter Cairns most appreciated. She was now fighting to regain the proud interest he had once taken in her ready wit and irresistible humor. Her reprehensible behavior had amounted to stupidity. Peter Cairns most hated stupidity in man or woman.

Peter Cairns repressed an audible chuckle at this latest news from his lawless daughter. “This is not the place to discuss ethics,” he said dryly. “Run your car into town and meet me in the hotel lounge.”

“Race you in; cross town, or any old way?” Leslie proposed on impulse. She eyed her father doubtfully.

For a long moment the two stared into each other’s faces, as though each were endeavoring to determine the strength or weakness of the other.

“I’ll go you.” Peter Cairns spoke with a finality which set Leslie’s heart to pounding violently.

“My car was built for speed and I know how to get the speed out of it without arousing the natives. Look out, and don’t get pinched.” Leslie brought her car up on an exact line with the racer. “One, two, three, go to it,” she called animatedly. Then she was off over the pike on not only a go-as-you please race to Hamilton. She was on the first lap of what she hoped would be the quick road back to her father’s heart.

Leslie won the race. Peter Cairns was not familiar with the short cut she took. It bumped her car over a stretch of uneven paved street but brought her triumphantly to the entrance of the Hamilton House at least a minute ahead of her father’s car.

“Why did you pick Hamilton of all places to come back to?” Peter Cairns was presently demanding of her. The two had seated themselves opposite each other in a deserted corner of the lounge.

“Probably the scene of my many crimes held a fascination for me,” Leslie advanced with a reflective air that completely upset the financier’s hitherto carefully preserved gravity. He laughed outright.

“What did this Miss Dean against whom I understand you had so much spite ever do to you that was unfair or dishonorable?” His alert features had quickly returned to their customary aloof cast.

“Not a blamed thing, Peter,” she said in a tone of sober humiliation. “You were right. I am several kinds of idiot, bound in one volume. The war’s over. I surrendered this afternoon, just before I met you. Whatever you know about Bean and me is probably true.”

“Who is Bean?” demanded Peter Cairns.

Leslie enlightened him. At the same time she quoted Marjorie’s own recent remarks on the subject. “You can see from that why I quit,” she said. “There was nothing else to do. Some day, when I’ve really put over a good square business enterprise I’ll tell you the story of Bean, her Beanstalks and Leslie Adoree.”

“Your first business ought to be to repair the mischief you made,” was the severely judicial response. “Unfortunately you can’t undo the anxious, troubled hours which your malice has imposed upon others. You have taught me a lesson. I needed it. My code of finance has been that of a hawk. I have revised it on more humane lines. I’d rather not have learned it from your mistakes. But it’s been learned now. I am not sorry I cut you off from me. Perhaps it was not the way to do. I don’t know. I loved you very tenderly as a child, Leslie. I was proud of you as a youngster. I should like to be proud of you as a young woman. What are the prospects?”

“Good, Peter. The best since the days when I was your pal and we planned to conquer the universe together. I’m trying to think of a way to make amends.” She met her father’s measuring glance with an air of patience quite foreign to her old wayward self. “I like it up here. I’ve a girl friend on the campus. I really like her. I want you to meet her. Gaylord approves of her. What more can you ask?”

“I’ll take you at your word.” For the first time since meeting her father he held out his hand. Leslie placed her right hand in his strong fingers. Her left reached out very timidly and covered the hand she held. It was the silent ratification of affection between Peter and Peter Cairns’ daughter.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked after a brief silence.

“I told Wilkins, my secretary, to keep track of you. I made only a flying trip to Europe. He told me you were here. I drove here soon after leaving the steamer. I had business at Hamilton Estates.”

“What are you going to do with my garage flivver?” A gleam of intense curiosity lived in Leslie’s eyes. “You said in your letter that some day I’d know why I had no business to buy the property for the site. Is today the day?”

“It may as well be.” Peter Cairns looked away, his mind evidently engaged in choosing the words for his next utterance. “My name isn’t Peter Cairns,” he said deliberately. “It’s Peter Carden. Alec Carden was my father. I ran away from him and his harsh tyranny. I changed my name to Cairns. The old Scotch name of our family was Cairrens. It became Carden in James the First’s time.”

“What?” Force of surprise brought out Leslie’s habitual monosyllable. She wondered if she were awake or dreaming. Had her father, a lord of finance, once been a hot-headed rebellious boy who had changed his name and run away from Carden Hedge?

“Yes, what?” her father repeated half ironically. “My father left Carden Hedge to John, along with all he had. He disinherited me. When I went I took with me a bundle of bonds from the safe. They were mine; left me by my mother. I went to New York and made good. All this by the way of explaining about the garage site. You paid John Saxe sixty thousand dollars for a site that belonged to the Carden Estate. Not a foot of it belonged to the Saxe Estate. I had it surveyed and proved the Carden right to it. Saxe refunded the money. He was innocent in the matter.”

Leslie’s downcast reception of this last crushing surprise touched her father. “Buck up, Cairns II.,” he said in the hearty, affectionate tone which Leslie had been dreading, yet longing, to hear. “I know I handed you a hummer. Now there’s not much more to say, except that I bought Carden Hedge over two years ago of John. I’ve let him live there off and on, simply to have someone look after the property a little. I thought once of living there myself. I changed my mind. It’s a pretty country up here. I liked it when I was a boy, and do still. I must be on my way tomorrow. How long would you like to stay in Hamilton?” He questioned with the old deference he had formerly observed to her wishes.

“I’d rather go back to New York with you.” Leslie fought to keep her voice steady. “I can’t. I want to stay on here a little and try to find a way to do something for the dormitory, or the college or the students—anything I can do to make up for—” She paused, regained composure, went on. “I’m to blame for keeping you out of happiness. I cheated myself, too. How could you care to live at the Hedge after what I did at Hamilton? I have learned the big lesson this time. I’d go back to college and begin all over again in spite of what might be said, if I could, Peter. I’d do it for you.”

Peter Cairns saw a white-winged evanescent grace called happiness flit before his eyes. It had whisked away the day he had learned of Leslie’s expulsion from college. “Perhaps we’ll yet live at the Hedge, Leslie,” he said. “We can do that much, if we can’t go back in other ways. Now I’ll make a bargain with you. If you can find any good and original reason for keeping your flivver I’ll give the whole business to you as it stands. It must be original, though. That’s the chief requirement. And it must be something that will benefit Hamilton College students, faculty, dormitory—in fact the whole aggregation. Go to it. You perfect the plan. I’ll finance it for you. Nothing but the best will be accepted by me in the idea line. I’m going to try to prove that my girl has as good a brain as there is going.”