didn't get home until nine o'clock in the evening. True, she observed that her father seldom went to bed until she was in, but he never showed the least clemency or pity.
This cool, noncommittal manner of her father was to Ada the hardest, feature of her ordeal. For ordeal it was. Of course she drooped, paled a little, in spite of the tonic which the family physician left for her, after the unexpected call he made her, one night when Marcus was absent at his club.
But there was one compensation, and Ada was not unaware of it. As the summer wore on, she was frequently in her father's private office, and to her amazement, even in the face of his determination to break her if he could, she found that as Miss Belle, the stenographer, she could not help but feel admiration for her employer. Often, sitting quiet and mouse-like in her stenographer's chair, she overheard bits of Marcus Belden's keen conversation, listened to men asking her father's advice, intuitively became aware of the good opinion in which he was held. Here in this world of his, he was not narrow, bigoted, or despotic. She knew very little about business, but she was as conscious of a certain clean, respected quality in her father's business methods, as she was aware of the vague fineness in the
