well-dressed, with no special crimes on their consciences, would be able to face even the most irascible of parents without any great amount of diffidence. The facts in this case, however, were decidedly peculiar. Father and son had yet to meet for the first time. The reasons governing the postponement of this encounter were not unknown to a few of George Prewett's friends, but Harold himself was entirely uninitiated in regard to them. Before going away to college he had lived with an aunt in Connecticut. He had always been provided with plenty of pocket-money and, on rare occasions, he had received instructions on minor points of conduct from his father's legal adviser. During his college years his vacations had invariably been spent at the home of his aunt, who, under orders, probably, never mentioned his father's name, although she was his sister. He had not, indeed, been entirely certain that his father was alive until, on the day that he graduated, he had received a telegraphic summons from the lawyer, bidding him to come to his father's house on West Eighty-second Street in New York. His father, at last, desired to see him.
Now the nature of this unnatural father's plans in his behalf held sinister terrors for Harold. This aloof parent, having footed the bills unquestioningly for twenty-one years, might conceivably have it in mind to take advantage of this fact to make unpleasant conditions in regard to the future.
