Out in midstream lay the crouching hulk of a battleship, and its somber gray was the one note that contradicted the softness of the morning.
Bristoll turned his face again to the interior, where a flood of sun from the broad window at the back filled the place with eastern light. He never tired of that room, the library where his chief dispatched those matters of more urgent business that pursued him even to his home. It was a room that might have served a potentate as a council-chamber with its treasury of almost priceless art, yet it reflected everywhere the quiet of faultless taste and the elegance born of a restrained and sure discernment.
"And all of it," Carl Bristoll murmured to himself, as he awaited the coming of its master, "he made for himself in a scant ten years, and he stands only at the threshold of his career!" That often repeated formula was a sort of daily tonic with which his ambition reminded itself that life holds no prize locked behind impossible barriers for him who has the courage and resolution to grasp it. Yet had he been older he would have added, "The impossible is only possible to the child of Destiny."
He heard a quiet movement behind him, and turned to find the butler standing at his elbow with a tray of early mail, into which the secretary plunged, separating the purely personal from those letters which the great man saw only through his subordinate's eyes.
"I'm not at all sure, Mr. Bristoll, that the master will rise early," volunteered the servant. "He was with his sister until midnight, and after that Mr. Paul came in and I heard him playing the piano, sir, as late as three o'clock."
Carl laughed. "I had a call from him on the 'phone an hour ago," he answered. "He spoke of a busy day ahead, and suggested an early start. There are some men, Harrow, who find rest simply in changing the brain's occupation."
"Yes, sir, quite so," admitted the butler dubiously. "Still, as the poet says, sir, it's sleep that 'knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,' sir. Sometimes I have apprehensions that the master will overtax his strength."
"I didn't know, Harrow," smiled the secretary, "that you were a disciple of the poets."
"Only, sir, in an unostentatious way," deprecated the man. "It has been my good fortune to serve in families where such niceties have been highly regarded, sir, and, I take it, advantageous associations reflect themselves in one's tastes, sir. But—" he dropped his voice, and came a step nearer—"but, sir, if you will pardon me, sir, I should like to ask a question. You know, of course, that the master's sister arrived last night from Europe?"
Bristoll nodded. He himself had not yet had the privilege of seeing the young woman, the fame of whose loveliness had preceded her: a loveliness which had enthralled men from the Irish Sea to Suez.
"Of course, sir, it's not for me to entertain opinions, but—" The butler paused in evident embarrassment, and the secretary's eyes narrowed a little.
"You are quite right, Harrow," he asserted shortly. "I can't see that you are required to express any opinion."
"Of course, sir, I was only going to say—"
"Well—don't say it."
But, for all his obsequiousness, the admirable Harrow was a persistent diplomat.
"No, sir, of course I sha'n't. I was only going to ask you—"
The secretary looked up with an impatient frown on a forehead shaped for resolution.
"All right. Ask me and have it over."
"I was going to inquire, sir, whether you regard it likely that the new mistress would—as I might say, sir—institute any sweeping changes of régime in our milieu? Things have gone on very well, sir, as they were." The interrogation carried a note of sharp anxiety: the apprehension of a petty monarch who might face the fate of being deposed.
"I don't know." The reply was curt, and Harrow with a bow said only, "Yes, sir, thank you. I was just speculating on the possibilities, sir."
For a while there was silence in the library as Bristoll ran through letter after letter, his hand racing over the stenographer's pad upon which he reduced their purport to succinct notes. He always enjoyed these responsible mornings with his chief because they were times of intimate association with a mind that directed colossal operations, and they savored almost of the importance of cabinet meetings.
Often, as he read the fluctuations of the ticker tape or glanced at financial scareheads in the evening papers, he smiled knowingly with the memory of a sentence spoken at the breakfast-table or an edict uttered in this library, which had been the motive power behind the news; and which to the world at large remained an unseen impulse.
Now Bristoll heard a quick step coming down the stairs with a schoolboy's buoyant lightness and the whistling of a popular air. It might have been a college sophomore arriving light-heartedly from his cold plunge, rather than the Titan whose word in the Street was already a thing which no one of the older money-kings could ignore.
Carl Bristoll rose, and Hamilton Burton broke off his whistling to smile gaily as he clapped the younger man on the shoulder and inquired with a voice remarkably soft and musical, "Well, how is our young Minister of Finance this morning?"
Hamilton Montagu Burton stood an even six feet, and from a generous breadth of shoulders, swung back in free erectness, he tapered to a trim slenderness of waist and thigh. In the immaculate elegance of his dress he justified his reputation as the best-clothed man in New York, even while he retained the grace of a seeming carelessness. His eyes, though he had slept a scant four hours, looked out clear-pupiled and tireless, but it was the shape and carriage of the head that proclaimed mastery. The pattern of brow and jaw and clean-cut lip and indomitable eye gave that head an alert power which made it the head of one born to command. The illuminating smile could give way to a sternness and a decision that became ruthless in its dominance, and the eyes could harden like diamonds as swiftly as they could melt.
Carl Bristoll laughed, and after the custom of badinage that had grown up between them he made a bow of mock ceremony as he replied.
"Quite fit, Sire, and your Majesty's appearance proclaims you equally so."
It was hardly the sort of greeting that the outsider might have expected, but neither financier nor secretary was an ordinary type and between them throve an excellent understanding.
As Bristoll read from his notes Hamilton Burton's face lost its smile and became instantly attentive while his questions snapped out clear-clipped and comprehensive.
It seemed that the brain was separated into many zones, each carrying forward its separate functions without interference or confusion. Through the channels of vision, hearing and quick independent thought, varied propositions were at one time being absorbed while the master instinct of coördination was weighing all and planning yet other affairs.
"And now," announced the financier, when the stenographic notes had been read and others written in swift adjudication of their problems, "the rest can wait till we get down-town. There's Harrow calling us to breakfast—and breakfast is an institution I particularly venerate." The master of the establishment turned to the butler and inquired, "Hasn't Miss Burton come down?"
"Miss Burton, sir," replied the man with a shade of uneasiness in his voice, "sent word by her maid that she would breakfast in her room."
The naïve smile faded from Hamilton Burton's face and for an instant it took on something of that aggressive set which men in the Stock-Exchange
