lure to men. It's like the women of the streets." Then he added gruffly with a sudden glance at the dying fire, "She's always been bad. They're a bad lot . . . the whole family, unstable, not to be relied upon. They go their crazy way . . . all of 'em. Why there was Sam Barr, Lily Shane's uncle, who spent his whole life inventing useless things . . . never making a cent out of 'em. His daughter lives in a cheap boarding house now. . . . If he'd made an honest living instead of mooning about." He laughed scornfully. "Why, he even thought he could invent a perpetual motion machine." Then he halted abruptly as if he realized that he had protested too much, and returned to the main stream of his discourse. "As for the Town going to the ball, all the Town knows just what I know, and they talk about it, only they see fit to ignore it to-night because there is music and good food and champagne punch at Shane's Castle."
In the silence that followed Clarence bent his neatly brushed head and slipped away into a world of philosophy new and strange to him. "Yes," he found himself thinking, "the world is like that and nobody can change it much. If Lily Shane had asked you, you would have gone."
But in this he was unfair to his enemy; Skinflint Seton would not have gone, because he would have taken too great a satisfaction in refusing. It was this satisfaction, undoubtedly, which he now missed so bitterly.
But the turn things had taken exerted upon Clarence a curious effect. It was as if he found himself for the first time on the offensive, as if he were placed now within the ranks of all the others who were at the ball, laughing, dancing, forgetful (as Lily Shane had been) that Harvey Seton even existed. He had begun to lose the feeling of isolation, of being trapped. There appeared in the offing a gleam of hope.
He knew vaguely that it was difficult to deal with this man
