CHAPTER XVII

Mr. Hartagous brought with him a metropolitan atmosphere, the manner of one used to good society, a portly stomach accustomed to fine feeding, a handsome gray-streaked beard parted in the middle, and a pair of searching, quickly glancing dark eyes. He landed at Great Oaks shortly before dinner, and it was at table that he made Desmond’s acquaintance. It was not he, but the guardian of the Faurie boys who had sought out Desmond, and through the offices of mutual friends secured his services as tutor, when Mrs. Faurie had placed a period to her European wanderings, but Mr. Hartagous, in the general family interests, had been apprised of all the details, and in meeting Desmond for the first time, inwardly congratulated all concerned upon the phenomenal opportunity of finding such a man for such a place. The meal was somewhat more elaborate than usual, in honor of the guest. Mrs. Faurie, in one of her Parisian gowns, was in great beauty. So marked, indeed, was the effect, that it seemed not inappropriate to take some notice of what was so obvious.

“Upon my word, madam,” Mr. Hartagous declared, having progressed with great prosperity in feeding through the menu to the dessert, “you must surely lose the tally of the years as you go, else you would not have the effrontery to look younger than when I first met you as a bride.”

“I was a skinny bride,” she smiled. “The years round out the angles. But they lay on fat and fads and frumpishness, and I feel really like an old country-woman.

He looked at her beamingly, his face flushed, partly from the reflection of the old-fashioned red Bohemian glass finger-bowls, and partly from Mr. Faurie’s Madeira, which he had laid down a good many years ago, and which had survived him to delight other palates. Mr. Hartagous was pleased and surprised to find how debonair was her carriage under the changed prospects. He had not thought she could sustain her equanimity in such cruel incertitudes, nothing positively established, but great loss,—financial ruin, more or less complete. He had feared the visit as a dismal experience; but her brilliant aspect, her joyous tones, might enliven even a board at which sat the three downcast and indignant Faurie boys, thoroughly schooled as to their civility, but showing in every facial line how they deprecated and resented his part in the untoward falling out of affairs. The two younger ones asked to be excused shortly after the entrance of the dessert; and as Mr. Stanlett had not appeared at all since the arrival of the guest, sending in by Bob a plea of indisposition, Mrs. Faurie felt some anxiety, and a desire to go and inquire into his malady.

“I leave you in good hands with Mr. Desmond and Reginald,” she said to Mr. Hartagous, as she rose from the table with a rich stir of silks and laces; “I will go and see how Uncle Clarence feels now, and meet you later in the parlor.”

Reginald, pale and disaffected, and all unlike himself, lingered listlessly for an interval, and presently asked Desmond if he might be excused also.

“What?—are you going to leave us, too?” Mr. Hartagous cried out genially, in a determinedly cheerful and friendly tone.

“I am nothing of a boon companion,” said Reginald. “Mr. Desmond does not allow me to drink but one glass of light wine,—I shall not be missed.” And with a poor effort at a friendly smile, obviously insincere, he stayed for no more parley.

“Ah, you seem to have the young fellows under good control,—excellent for them. A short tether,—best thing in the world for colts apt to feel their oats.”

Mr. Hartagous was now looking about the room with considerable freedom and a sort of disregard of the presence of the tutor, taking _faute de mieux_ the part of host. “Everything is just as it used to be: old sylvan wall-paper, in design of tapestry hangings, hunting-scene; old racing-cups in that big mahogany cabinet. Faurie used to have a string of good horses. And there is the family silver,—very fine,—armorial bearings,—all just as it used to be. Can’t think what Mrs. Faurie did with her money,—didn’t put any of it on Great Oaks, at all events.”

Desmond cloaked his failure to respond in speculations on this theme by passing the bottle, and Mr. Hartagous promptly refilled his glass.

“Severe stroke for her,—the finding of that codicil. Pity it didn’t come into my hands earlier! There wouldn’t be the devil and all to pay as there is now.” He lifted his glass and refreshed himself bountifully. Perhaps he was used to livelier company at dinner, for he presently remarked Desmond’s serious, not to say dispirited expression, and, possibly because unable to appreciate that the tutor’s anxiety could be disconnected with a personal application, hastened to stipulate: “But it will not affect _you_ at all. Your salary comes out of the minors’ estates. Mrs. Faurie is not at expenses, except such as may be voluntary in their education and maintenance.”

Mr. Hartagous was well aware that there had been some difficulty in catching an appropriate man to consign to the remote depths of an isolated plantation in the Mississippi bottom-lands. As Mrs. Faurie was not willing that her sons should be separated from her for their schooling, already much postponed, Mr. Keith, the guardian, must needs secure a college graduate, of irreproachable character, of elegant breeding, and so piteously poor as to be willing, for a small salary, to turn his back on the world at the outset of his career. As by signal good fortune the guardian had captured this _rara avis_, it was no part of the executor’s scheme to interfere to set him at liberty again, or to foster restlessness by any suspicion that his financial interest was threatened in the impending changes.

“But Mrs. Faurie will have to pay the piper for the dance that she has had,—a long and a lively one from all that I hear,—and I should think that it would sweep away the best part of her provision under this codicil. I do hope that she won’t make a fight for it,—very embarrassing the whole affair is for me, especially considering the attitude the boys take in the matter. Mr. Keith can afford to pooh-pooh it, and say they will think differently when they come to their majority. He is not called upon to sustain their resentment. Yet he would be ready at the drop of a hat to sue me, the executor, in their interest in this very matter that the little fools want to relinquish. As far as their interest is concerned, however, there will be no litigation in carrying out the provisions of the codicil. But I confess I dread the idea of Mrs. Faurie’s futile resistance.”

“I think Mrs. Faurie has no intention of making a contest,” said Desmond, fearing that his silence on the subject might be misconstrued.

The lawyer whirled around excitedly. “Turn over Great Oaks Plantation without a fight,—eh? She will have to lose it to make good.”

Mr. Hartagous had a brightening aspect. There had been already sufficiently discordant elements in the situation fomented by the conflict of laws in the two states where the properties lay, a pertinent instance of which came to mind in the incongruity of an indeterminate limit of twenty or thirty years in Tennessee for the revocation of probate in common form, and in Mississippi a prescription, with the statutory savings, of only two years, which had long ago elapsed. Though this was hardly conclusive, by reason of the exception of the statute, in favor of the disability of the minors, and their financial interests in the revocation of the Mississippi probate, it might further be inoperative to render Mrs. Faurie secure in her local holdings, if her interest in Great Oaks, for life or widowhood, as under the will, could be subjected to levy as for debt to satisfy the requirements of the codicil in Tennessee. The guardian of the minors had been alert to perceive another phase of the situation incident to the discovery of the paper, and had indeed averred to Mr. Hartagous that, even could their rights of prescription be defeated, he felt that the long and incomprehensible delay to produce the codicil savored of concealment, and in the event of proof of this, the Mississippi statute allowed two years further for the revocation _pro tanto_ of the probate. The lapse of time had wrought such ruin to Mrs. Faurie’s interests that, even apart from her high character, which precluded such a suspicion, she could never be supposed to have been a party to such a disastrous scheme of concealment; and the diligence of the search of Mr. Hartagous among the valuable papers of the decedent was protected by a letter from Mr. Faurie himself, dated a few days before his death, stating that all important papers had been transferred to his keeping, as the executor, in view of the settlement of the estate. Mr. Hartagous had not found it an easy task, with its diversified interests, its complicated litigation, its many details, and he welcomed the thought that perhaps after all Mrs. Faurie might yield at once to the inevitable, and the settlement of the estate might yet go cannily on, including the provisions of the codicil, without raising the issue of _devisavit vel non_ and repairing to the circuit court for probate in solemn form.

Desmond was a trifle embarrassed. “It may not be necessary to relinquish Great Oaks,” he said uneasily. “Mrs. Faurie has other convertible assets.”

The lawyer bent his brows and cast a keen glance at him. There was a significant silence. “So you are in her confidence, are you?”

There was so much receptivity in his aspect as he waited for the reply, he was so evidently ready to discriminate and utilize all manner of subtle and diffusive impressions and information, that Desmond grew unwontedly wary. “Not to the extent of being able to speak for her,” he stipulated. “But Mrs. Faurie is very candid, as you know, and I am in a position to hear much of the family conversation.”

He came to a dead halt. But Mr. Hartagous had not wrestled with reluctant witnesses for a matter of thirty years to be baffled at this late day by an after-dinner interlocutor with a bottle of choice wine between them. He gave it a push as he said: “And I also stand in a quasi-confidential relation to her, having long been the friend of her husband and herself, as well as the executor of his will. It would gratify me extremely to be able to adjust this difficult matter without contention and the rupture of long-established amicable sentiments.” He gazed keenly at the handsome face of the tutor, intellectual and powerful beyond his years and experience, the expression of mental value enhancing the effect of symmetry of feature. He was about to suggest that it might be beneficial to Mrs. Faurie’s interests to canvass the matter between them, and from its incidents strike out some middle course of advantage to all parties concerned. But there was something in Desmond’s deep, steadfast eyes that admonished him that this confidence could come about only from inadvertence. Desmond would not of set purpose disclose Mrs. Faurie’s intentions. The executor began to realize that if he wanted such facts as the tutor knew, he must surprise them.

“Mrs. Faurie would not want Great Oaks at any rate,” he hazarded. “I wonder at Faurie for that disposition of the plantation,—cumbrous property.”

“It is a fine place,” said Desmond, non-committally.

“Looks mighty pretty now,—a full fathom deep in water in the shallowest spot,” sneered the lawyer.

“The land is of fine quality,—raises good crops, I am told,” Desmond commented.

“Don’t need fertile land to raise crawfish.”

“Why, even the floods that drowned the world dried off after a while; and Great Oaks is relying on precedent and Providence, and expects to raise cotton here again some day.” Desmond’s tone was crisp. He had no necessity that he recognized to submit to the acerbities of the executor. It was strain enough on his patience to make allowances for the infirmities and age of Mr. Stanlett.

His tone, the vigor of his argument, shook the self-restraint of Mr. Hartagous. The lawyer’s spirit of contention responded. He wagged his head with an aspect of melancholy, not unrelated to his sentiment, when he said: “The overflow will cry down the price. I have a letter in my pocket now from a would-be purchaser, a Mr. Loring, formerly a resident of this county. His offer is low, but as much as the place can command for the next ten years to come.” He shook his head and filled his glass anew.

Desmond quickly reviewed the events of the past weeks. Doubtless the news of the discovery of the codicil had been widely bruited abroad, and thus Mr. Loring, aware of the exigencies of the prospective refunding and of Mrs. Faurie’s depleted resources, had taken the field with the first offer. He had astutely approached the executor rather than its present owner, whose disposition to sell might be in inverse proportion to the necessity; and as the exacting creditor, Mr. Hartagous, knowing that such an opportunity of sale would not be easily duplicated, might press an acceptance as a ready solution of the emergency, which promised him a world of anxiety and perplexity. Little effort indeed might be requisite to urge, flatter, overpersuade a woman unaccustomed to the turmoils of hopeless debt and annoyed by business complications.

But poor Honoria Faurie! To have unwittingly dispensed her whole fortune as her income, her annuity. To be called upon now to surrender the roof above her head as penance of those years of plenty that had held out to her the deceit of perpetuity. Desmond trembled for her future, for her sons were mere children and helpless. He feared lest she be harassed into precipitancy and clutch at any prospect of speedy deliverance from these troublous toils, willing to concede anything, to relinquish everything, to have peace,—when, alas! there would he no more peace. He realized the immense capacity to clinch tight, to hold hard, of the genus of which Mr. Hartagous was a type,—cool, collected, with no personal interest involved that might affect his judgment, ready to stand on a quibble, to fight for the minutest fraction, to prolong the contention to the uttermost, to the extremest exhaustion of his adversary’s slender resources of resistance. And she had not a soul to whom she might appeal, save indeed some lawyer, earning his fee, and appreciative only of the surface conditions of her case,—but no one who cared for her, who would think for her. The realization roused Desmond in her behalf.

“You had best wait till morning to place the offer before her,” Desmond said, determined to be the first to acquaint her with the facts, determined that she should not meet her adversary in his guise of friend without consideration of the double identity in which he came. “There is always so much stir in the parlor after dinner,—the children and their dogs make a deal of noise. Mrs. Faurie always gives up her evenings to the entertainment of her sons.”

He had no mind to offer the library, which indeed had been assigned to his exclusive use, and he hoped that Mr. Hartagous did not remember its facilities for quiet consultation, so long had it been dismantled.

Mr. Hartagous was one of the most acute of men, and his facial traits were well under control. Few people could have interpreted the sudden cynical uplifting of his bushy eyebrows as he said casually, “Ah, well,—plenty of time,—plenty of time.”

But Desmond’s perceptions were quickened in her interests and he knew that the hour was come, that before they separated for the night, Mrs. Faurie would be acquainted with the executor’s version of the facts,—that they were the most lucky of mortals! for property was slow of sale, plantations a drug upon the market, the labor questions impossible of solution; clouds, darkness, environed them on every side, and they knew not whither to grope,—and here suddenly a flood of financial sunlight was opening upon them in the midst of their night of despondency. Only the touch of her pen,—the title of Great Oaks, which she had always loathed, would be transferred. The millionaire’s cash and notes would make good her indebtedness to the estate to that extent, at least; the rest could be “carried”—fatal word!—arranged for a time with liens on smaller properties. Plausible representation!—the sense of a load of debt lifted, the turbulent apprehension of contention averted. She might adopt the executor’s conclusions, and indeed from his point of view there was naught else practicable. She had known him long, liked him well, and relied on his friendship. But his duty in the premises was to the estate, to make the most and the best of the testator’s dispositions as far as it was concerned. As to the widow, the wreck was her own work, unconscious though she had been, mistaken; he had no responsibility so far as she was interested save to enforce the provisions of the codicil, and to exact the terms of the refunding clause. She might be prevailed upon, in the first flush of relief that any solution of the problem was at hand, to sign at once, to-night, some agreement of sale; she might not commit herself beyond the possibility of withdrawal, but so far embrace the proposition as to be unwilling to recede from it. And indeed she might be persuaded into a coincidence of opinion. His representations might fix her resolution. Later, Desmond’s remonstrances might not avail. He was young, as she knew,—she had called him repeatedly a mere boy. He could not be sure that she seriously valued his business instincts, when he had no business experience. He desired only to put her on her guard, to excite her apprehension, to counsel reserve, above all delay. He could imagine the sequence, and it appalled him. The wishes of Mrs. Faurie, reduced to poverty, to insignificance, would no longer have such weight as when issued from her princess-like affluence and preëminence, and the wishes of the boys were as empty of influence as the disability of their minority would compel. He wondered dolorously as to her impending fate. Perhaps there might be accorded to her, from among the chips and blocks of the Faurie estate, saved from the cormorant clutch of the refunding, some cottage on a side street in the outskirts of Vicksburg or Natchez, some little farm of a few acres regularly overflowed, and raising indeed more crawfish than cotton.

It seemed as if Desmond had intentionally misled Mr. Hartagous when he opened the parlor door and they entered a room of absolute silence and stillness. Mrs. Faurie, in a gown of sage green silk brocaded in lighter tones, the lace at her throat coruscating with the delicate white fires of a diamond “sunburst,” leaned back in a large chair, her eyes on the hearth, evidently moody from argument and remonstrance with her sons. Their faces, as they sat in a row on a sofa, were downcast, full of distress, and marked with the distorting trace of nervous anxiety, which they could feel as if they were men, but unlike men could not hope to do aught to abate;—only Chub gazed up at Mr. Hartagous with childish, lowering, resentful eyes and a half-suppressed tendency to pout. Mr. Stanlett, pallid, seeming more lean than usual, shrunken, and very perceptibly aged by the shock of the excitements of finding the codicil, lay in a reclining-chair on the opposite side of the fire. He greeted Mr. Hartagous with courtesy indeed, but with noticeably few words, and protesting that his indisposition had passed, welcomed him to Great Oaks mansion. Desmond felt the future in the instant. It would require but little exertion of Mr. Hartagous’s tact to inaugurate one of the old-time reminiscences, which seemed the delight and the resource of Mr. Stanlett’s failing life. His eyes would flash, his thin cheek flush, the boys would listen in spellbound silence, and Mr. Hartagous, already seated beside her, would secure an uninterrupted tête-à-tête with Mrs. Faurie; for the tutor, in his subsidiary position and obligatory show of respect, must needs accord Mr. Stanlett’s narration his attention also. But even should Desmond so far forget himself as to interpose in the discussion of business in which he had no concern, Mr. Hartagous had arguments which on first view would easily discomfit his crude and inexperienced counsels. Nevertheless, Desmond resolved anew that she should not hear of the offer of Mr. Loring for Great Oaks first from the executor. He cast about him in desperation. Mr. Stanlett was already replying with some spirit as to the early history of certain localities that Mr. Hartagous had noticed from the guards of the steamboat in coming down the Mississippi River from Memphis, which itself was built on one of the famous Chickasaw Bluffs. Mr. Stanlett’s memory reached back to the days before the Chickasaws and Choctaws had generally vanished westward, and he had then gleaned from the chiefs some traditions at first hand which made him an authority on moot points of early history, and he piqued himself on his accuracy. It was easy indeed to engage him in a discussion as to the site of the old Chickasaw towns,—seven of them together in a row, the last called Ash-wick-boo-ma (Red Grass),—where they defeated D’Artaguette and later Bienville, and the details of the battle of Ackia and its famous last charge. The young Fauries’ faces had brightened. Suddenly Reginald asked a breathless question as to the boy-commander, the Canadian, Voisin, who at sixteen years of age conducted the safe and skilled retreat of the troops through many miles of wilderness from the field of the battle which his superior officer, the unfortunate D’Artaguette, had lost.

Mr. Stanlett needed no more prompting, nor, Desmond feared, would he heed interruption. Mr. Hartagous presently leaned forward with his elbow on the table at Mrs. Faurie’s right hand, and had begun to speak to her in a low voice, when Desmond asked Mr. Stanlett if he knew the ancient French buglecalls, and said that one claimed a Merovingian origin. He declared that he would like to believe that the same strain which had rung from the famous “Olivant,” the horn of the Paladin at Roncesvalles, had served to rally D’Artaguette’s motley levies of Indians, and _coureurs des bois_, and French soldats along the banks of the Mississippi, and would forever continue to sound down the centuries, to find echoes in the heart of the enthusiast and the metre of the poet.

“Let me see if you find the old calls familiar,” Desmond exclaimed, lifting the lid of the piano and tangling it in his haste with its crimson embroidered cloth cover. It was an old piano, with the felt of its hammers worn hard and thin. So much the better, since he desired to drown out the voice of Mr. Hartagous. The martial strain, instinct with its imperative mandate, throbbed through the room and then died away, and as they listened a note was repeated, and still a vibration, as from some vague distance.

“An echo!—an echo!” cried Chub, vociferously. “Oh, mamma, listen to our Mr. Desmond! He can do anything,—how he can play!”

“Now, what do you suppose is the date of that call?” Mr. Stanlett’s cheek had flushed; his interest was roused.

“The introduction of this one can be definitely fixed,” and once more a spirited lilting strain rang through the room. Then Desmond turned on the piano stool. “Where, Reginald, did you put that old book on the Ancient Military Orders of France? It gives some old calls. I found that rummaging about in the library.”

“You find too much, sir, rummaging about!” said Mr. Stanlett, with a bent brow and a fiery eye. “You should curb your talents for rummaging about.”

But Desmond had thrust an old folio into his hand, with a recommendation to examine the very quaint and antique illustrations of arms and accoutrements and military costume with which it was embellished. There were some extra inserts of military portraits, steel engravings, and Mr. Stanlett was turning the leaves, his thin mouth drawn in very small, his eye alight with a fervor of interest, his rebuke and its cause forgotten in an instant.

Not by Mr. Hartagous. He made the serious mistake of casting a merry, significant glance at the tutor, expecting it to be returned in like genial wise. He desired to establish confidential relations with Desmond. He might find so accomplished, so versatile, so lightning-quick a fellow of special use here, where diplomatic management might be necessary to smooth the way for readjustments. But Desmond did not respond, and Mr. Hartagous felt the rising surge of anger. He realized that the young man was too observant to have lost the demonstration; he was far too keen to fail to appreciate its relish and its demand for the recognition of Mr. Stanlett’s pitiably funny allusion to the tutor’s instrumentality in discovering the codicil of the last will and testament of the late Mr. Faurie. Desmond’s studied insensibility was a covert rebuke, and the spirit of Mr. Hartagous revolted against this schooling, which he felt might befit some crude hobbledehoy. He would have liked to remind the tutor that he was the guardian’s employee and not Mrs. Faurie’s, and that the pedagogic office was held at his pleasure; to recall the fact that despite the young man’s learning and many accomplishments, it had been already demonstrated to him that one must have foothold, a starting-point, to make these felt by the world. A flood, quotha!—a sorry time a dove or any other fowl would have to find a perch, set adrift from this ark of Great Oaks mansion.

Mrs. Faurie intercepted and interpreted the glance, and for a time she held her eyes down to the fan in her hand with which she seemed gracefully to toy, but Desmond had seen that they were full of tears. She felt that these two men, in the pride of their powers, in the flush of their prime, in the vigor of their health and strength, were ridiculing poor, dear Uncle Clarence for his distress in her loss, for his feeble, inadequate, unreasoning indignation at the officious intermeddling, as he thought it, which had brought the catastrophe about.

But Desmond had begun to sing,—she had not known that he could sing,—and the room was filled with surging waves of melody. A powerful baritone voice he had, of no great cultivation, enough only to temper the crudities of his rendering, but of correct intonation, and it was singularly, lusciously sweet. They were military songs that he sang, with the triumph of the trumpets, the gay clash of the cannikin, the impetuous speed of the high-couraged war-horse, all infused through them. Now they were French and again German, and some were in quaint old English phrase of mediæval suggestion.

“Never, never let me hear you speak another word,” cried Mr. Stanlett, in senile delight. “You should go singing through the world like the mockingbirds in spring.”

He looked across the room, smiling and nodding, expectant of sympathetic response from Mr. Hartagous, who was as weary of it all as if the evening were spent in that other ark to which Great Oaks mansion was so often likened. Under these circumstances he could have as easily communicated with the ladies of the patriarchal Noah as with Mrs. Faurie,—the terrible Chub chasing continually from the side of the piano and across the room to fling himself into his mother’s arms crying, “Ain’t it beautiful, mamma? Ain’t it beautiful? The grand opera in Paree don’t touch Mr. Desmond nowhere!”

So weary, indeed, did Mr. Hartagous presently look that the dispersal of the party for the night was obviously in order, although much earlier than usual.

“Can you find your way back to your room, do you think?” Mrs. Faurie said to the guest, as the group stood at a side table in the hall and she lighted their bedroom candles seriatim.

The house was so large and so rambling in its plan that he was not sure that he remembered his way about it, he replied. He had expected, and indeed so had she, that Desmond would come forward with his readiness for any emergency and officiate as guide. But Desmond, stolidly unmindful, snuffed out and then relighted his own candle, its tiny white blaze illumining his flushed, absorbed face, and after a moment’s hesitation Reginald offered to accompany the guest to his room. Thus Mr. Hartagous departed to his night’s rest, a little dissatisfied with the situation, and not a little doubtful of the tutor. He resented this incertitude, because it was partly his influence that had placed Desmond here. “And mighty glad he was to come, too,” he reflected. He rather wondered that Desmond should not discern his own interests more clearly than to seem to adhere to the losing side, for Mrs. Faurie’s power, always limited, was now definitely a thing of the past. “For she is not worth one red cent, as matters stand!” Mr. Keith, he was aware, had begun to doubt whether the redundant maternal coddling was the best thing for the boys, and had only agreed to their persistent retention under her wing in deference to her wish; but Hartagous was sure, did he so desire, that he could easily induce him to insist as their guardian upon packing them off summarily to boarding-school, where they might encounter some of the roughening and hardening phases of boy life. “Make men of them.” Although balked of the conversation which he had expected to have with Desmond when he should have reached the room assigned him, and feeling distinctly man-handled, he determined to have a definite understanding with the tutor on the morrow, and apprise him that he was expected to act in the interest of his employer, the guardian, which was identical with that of the executor, in smoothing the way to a pacific adjustment of the troublous toils in which the discovery of the codicil had entangled the household of Great Oaks,—and this signified, in the interpretation of Mr. Hartagous, an unconditional surrender of all the opposing interests.

“It is not late, though you seem tired,—and I must speak to you to-night,” Desmond said to Mrs. Faurie, when the young host and the guest had vanished down the cross-hall.

She had her lighted candle in her hand, and the flame threw into high relief against the dull shadows her exquisite face, with the subdued green of her gown, the shimmer of the lace above her bosom, the diamond “sunburst” at her throat. “Won’t to-morrow answer?” she replied, stifling a yawn.

“No! Oh, no, indeed! Believe me, I would not insist, but the matter is urgent.”

“Heavens! More business!” she remonstrated. “I imagined that with the arrival of Mr. Hartagous all the bother would be over. He can think for us all. What else is a lawyer created for?”

“Your lawyer,—yes! But this man is not acting in your interest. He is acting for the estate.”

“It is the same thing,—my sons’ interest. He will settle everything.”

Desmond could scarcely have feared a more inert attitude of submission than this. How could the woman be so blind! “Come,” he said authoritatively, drawing her arm through his. “You shall hear first what I have to say.”

She turned back to the parlor with him, dragging a little unwillingly on his arm. “I have always appreciated ‘gentlemen’s society,’ as it is called, and I have to a degree and with exceptions loved my fellow men, but I had no conception until lately that the creatures had it in them to be so wonderfully and fearfully dull and depressing as they are when they talk of their everlasting business. Hereafter, if I have my choice, I shall always prefer ‘hen parties’ as the lesser evil.”

With an elaborate air of patience she seated herself on the sofa while he stirred up the fire and brightened the lamp. As he began to talk, she was inattentive at first, and interpolated irrelevant remarks. “What a lovely voice you have,” she said, as her eyes wandered to the open piano. “I shall be wanting you to sing all day.”

As he began to recapitulate the details of the codicil and the executor’s requirements concerning the refunding clause, she broke out, “Wouldn’t you hate to be as chuffy and as stuffy as Mr. Hartagous when you come to be of his age, and look so like a weasel?”

When he disclosed the real mission of Mr. Hartagous, to effect an immediate sale of Great Oaks, a light suddenly sprang into her face, and her voice broke into a sob. He saw that the situation bore far more heavily upon her than she had manifested. She had been whistling, as it were, to keep her courage up.

“How providential!” she cried. “It breaks my heart now to part from Great Oaks, but I see that it is the only way. And oh, for liberation! To be free from debt. The sense of it weighs upon me; I can understand the agony of the old torture of death by pressing.”

He was still for a moment, looking at her in sombre thought. “This is what I feared,” he said at last,—“your precipitancy. I want you to think, to survey the ground first, to test the possibilities.”

He had made out from the will a schedule of the properties, with their approximate values, and the amounts by years of the annual income that must be returned. He went across the room and sat beside her on the sofa, that they might look over the page together. Her face paled while scanning the estimates,—they seemed methodically to set forth financial ruin, absolute, hopeless.

“Then why,—how _dare_ that man come here and press Mr. Loring’s inadequate offer for Great Oaks?” she blazed out.

“Because he is not acting in your interest, but against you.”

She turned and looked Desmond in the face, her beautiful eyes bewildering at these close quarters. He dropped his own eyes on the paper in his hands.

“Mr. Hartagous must distribute the estate according to the terms of the codicil. As executor he is constrained by law to require the refunding of your receipts from it. He is coerced, too, by the position of the guardian, who also has no option, and who will in the changed state of things require this amount to be charged against your portion at the partitioning of the estate and the ascertaining and setting aside of the several shares of the minors. Naturally, Mr. Hartagous is anxious to seize the first opportunity of converting your assets to make good, whatever sacrifice it may impose on _you_.”

“What shall I do?—oh, what shall I do?” she cried, in despairing realization of the situation. “But why should I ask? I can only yield.”

“You can temporize,—stand out for the full value of the property,— fight for terms. Time is your ally. And you have this strength in your position, that you might give them a contest; a lawyer might find you sufficient grounds,—but, at all events, you are entitled to a fair valuation of your property.”

“But even then, Edward,” she put her hand on his and pressed it convulsively, “there is not a competence, not a hope from the estate for me.”

He did not seek to encourage her by false representations. He was looking the disaster squarely in the eye. “And the boys are powerless for years to come!” he admitted despondently.

Her lips were trembling piteously. “I have not a dollar that I can call my own. I have not a friend in the world.”

“You have me,—such as I am,” he said, his eyes downcast, still on the papers.

“I never think of you,—you are like another self. But you _are_ my friend, and I am not alone! You think for me,—you rescued me at the risk of your life. You think for me,—you care for me,—I am not alone!”

“Care for you!” he broke out, tempted beyond all resistance. “I care for nothing else on God’s earth. I love you,—I love you,—I worship you!”

She turned, staring at him in quiet surprise; then, as if she thought he might come nearer, she put one hand against his shoulder, holding him at arm’s length.

“Oh, I should have eaten out my heart in silence; I should never have said a word but for this strange change, when you seem as poor as I! But since you feel alone, you may care to know now how beloved, how cherished, how adored you are by me.”

“But suppose,—suppose,”—she was still looking hard at him, into his very eyes—“but suppose it might have been grateful to me earlier to know so much—”

“I could not have spoken then; I could not have asked you to make so great a sacrifice for me,—to relinquish your status under the will.”

She smiled radiantly at him. “It seems to me now that I might have been glad to make that sacrifice,—for you.” Once more her hand pressed against his shoulder to hold him at arm’s length. “But it can never be, now,” she stipulated, “when I can give you nothing.”

“Nothing! You are all the world to me,” he protested.

“No, you have your own difficult way to make, and I shall not burden you. It was only a fleeting fancy that came over me,—a sentimental glimpse of what I _might_ have felt for you had fortune favored us.”

“You shall not decree the future,” he declared imperiously. “I shall fashion it for us both. It is not yours to say. You have said enough. I know your heart better than you do,—I believe you love me—”

“Like a son,” she interrupted, with a gurgling laugh. “I am older than you by ten years.”

“And younger by a century in spirit, and as beautiful as the angels in heaven. If you leave Great Oaks, we go forth together. Life in poor conditions would not be sordid with you. It would always be fresh and deliriously sweet and forever a blessing, whatever hardships fate might impose. I am strong and well equipped, and with this hand in mine I could make my way against all the world. I would have no false pride to hamper my efforts, so truly proud would I be in having the dear privilege of working for you.”

“Like Chub,—would you dig in the garden?” The anticlimax was of conclusive import in the stress of the moment. She had not intended to yield, but she laughed in tender recollection of her little son’s childish offer of help, and in the instant of relaxation she burst into happy tears. Her head sank on Desmond’s shoulder, and his arm was around her.

“Like Chub, I would even dig in the garden,” he protested.