But right in the middle of the laugh--as if something infinitely funnier than a joke had smitten him suddenly--he stopped short, with one eyebrow stranded half-way up his forehead. "Eve!" he called sharply. "Eve! Come back here a minute!" Very laggingly from around the piazza corner the girl reappeared. "Eve," said her father quite abruptly, "this is Mr. Barton! Mr. Barton, this is my daughter!" Listlessly the girl came forward and proffered her hand to the Younger Man. It was a very little hand. More than that, it was an exceedingly cold little hand. "How do you do, sir?" she murmured almost inaudibly. With an expression of ineffable joy the Older Man reached out and tapped his daughter on the shoulder. "It has just transpired, my dear Eve," he beamed, "that you can do this young man here an inestimable service--tell him something--teach him something, I mean--that he very specially needs to know!" As one fairly teeming with benevolence he stood there smiling blandly into Barton's astonished face. "Next to the pleasure of bringing together two people who like each other," he persisted, "I know of nothing more poignantly diverting than the bringing together of people who--who--" Mockingly across his daughter's unconscious head, malevolently through his mask of utter guilelessness and peace, he challenged Barton's staring helplessness. "So--taken all in all," he drawled still beamingly, "there's nothing in the world--at this particular moment, Mr. Barton--that could amuse me more than to have you join my daughter in her ride this afternoon!" "Ride with me?" gasped little Eve Edgarton. "This afternoon?" floundered Barton. "Oh--why--yes--of course! I'd be delighted! I'd be--be! Only--! Only I'm afraid that--!" Deprecatingly with uplifted hand the Older Man refuted every protest. "No, indeed, Mr. Barton," he insisted. "Oh, no--no indeed--I assure you it won't inconvenience my daughter in the slightest! My daughter is very obliging! My daughter, indeed--if I may say so in all modesty--my daughter indeed is always a good deal of a--philanthropist!" Then very grandiloquently, like a man in an old-fashioned picture, he began to back away from them, bowing low all the time, very, very low,