The old man got up hurriedly. "Yes, Lute. Come into the dining-room.

You will excuse me, sir?" he said to Mr. Carter. He put his hand on Lute's arm, in a friendly grip, for there was a break in the boy's voice.

"I know about it," Lute said. They sat down at the dining-room table; Lute swallowed hard, and pulled with trembling fingers at his hatband; he did not lift his eyes. "And--and I want you to tell her not to take it."

"How is she, Lute?"

"I haven't seen her. She wouldn't come down-stairs. She sent me a little note," Luther said, taking it out of his breast-pocket, and then putting it back again tenderly. "'Course I won't pay any attention to it."

"Saying she'd release you, I suppose?"

"Yes; but that's nothing. I'll make her understand the minute I see her. But, Dr. Lavendar, I don't want that--that money!" the boy ended, almost with a sob. "I want you to tell her not to take it."

Dr. Lavendar was silent.

"At first I thought--I couldn't help thinking--we could get married right off. We could get married and have a home of our own; you know, we'd be rich people with all that money. And I suppose, honestly, that as things are now, there's no chance of our getting married for a good while. But I--I tell you what, sir. I'd rather never get married than--than touch that money!"

Dr. Lavendar nodded.

"You won't let her, sir? You'll make her give it back?"

"My dear boy, I can't 'make' Alice do anything. The money is hers."

"Oh, but Dr. Lavendar, won't you go and talk to her? It may be a temptation to her, just as it was to me, for a minute. We could just make the office hum, sir. We could put it right on its feet; we could have a real Daily. I know she'll think of that. _I_ just thought we could get married. But Alice will think about helping the office, and me."

"Of course the money would bring ease to her father--" Dr. Lavendar stopped abruptly.

"Oh, my _G.o.d_!" Lute said, and dropped his head on his arms.

"Bring ease to--to the family," Dr. Lavendar ended lamely.

"You know Mr. Gray won't touch it," Lute burst out; "and I can't let Alice, either. Dr. Lavendar, I thought maybe you'd let me hitch Goliath up and drive you out to the house?"

"Not to-night, Lute. Alice has got to be alone. Poor child, poor child! Yes; we've all of us got to meet the devil alone. Temptation is a lonely business, Lute. To-morrow I'll go, of course. Did you answer her note?"

"Oh yes; right off. I just said, 'Don't be foolish,' and--and some other things. I didn't tell her we mustn't take the money, because I hadn't thought of it then. Mrs. Gray said she wouldn't come out of her room. Oh, just think of her, all by herself!" Luther bent over and fumbled with his shoelace; when he looked up, Dr. Lavendar pretended not to see his eyes.

When the boy went away, Dr. Lavendar went back to the study and asked John Carter some legal questions: Suppose he had not found this child, what would have become of the money? Suppose the child should now decline to take it, what then?

"Well," said Mr. Carter, smiling, "as a remote contingency, I suppose I might reply that it would revert to the residuary estate. But did you ever know anybody decline 5000, Dr. Lavendar?"

"Never knew anybody who had the chance," Dr. Lavendar said; "but there's no telling what human critters will do."

"They won't do that," said John Carter.

What a long night it was, of rain and wind and dreadful thought! ...

Rebecca had told Alice, with kindness, but with such a grip upon herself lest exultation should tremble in her voice, that she seemed harsher than ever. Then she told Lute. He pleaded that Alice would speak to him, and Mrs. Gray had gone to the girl's room and bidden her come down-stairs.

"Come, Alice. You must control yourself. Come down and talk to Luther."

Alice shook her head. "I'll--write him a note."

Mrs. Gray carried the note back to Lute, and brought up the answer, which Alice read silently. Rebecca watched her; and then, with an effort, she said:

"Alice, remember we are not to judge. We don't understand. We must not judge. Good-night." She opened the door, and then looked at the child, seated, speechless, with blank eyes, on the edge of the bed.

"Good-night, Alice. I--I'm sorry for you, poor girl!" and she came back hastily and kissed her.

At that, even in her daze of horror, a glimmer of astonishment came into Alice's face. But she did not look up or speak. When it grew dark, she began mechanically to get ready for bed; she knelt down, as usual, at the big chintz-covered winged chair and began to say her prayers, her mind blind as to her own words: "Bless dear father--"

Then she cried out, suddenly and dreadfully, and covered her poor, shamed head with her arms, and prayed no more. Then came a long fit of crying, and then a dreary calm. Afterwards, as the night shut in with rain and rumble of thunder, the shame lightened a little, for, though she could not read it in the darkness, she held Lute's little note against her lips and kissed it, and cried over it, and said his words over to herself, and felt that at any rate there was one bright spot in it all: Lute would never have any more anxieties. Of Robert Gray she thought pitifully, but with not much understanding. Oh, dreadful, dreadful! But he had loved his wife so much (so the child thought) he would surely forgive her. Not knowing how little forgiveness counts for when a star goes out. Sometimes, sitting there on the floor, listening to the rain, she slept; then woke, with a numb wonder, which darkened into cruel understanding. _Shame; shame_--but Lute wouldn't be worried any more; Lute would be rich.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHE KNELT DOWN, AS USUAL, AT THE BIG CHINTZ-COVERED WINGED CHAIR"]

So the night pa.s.sed....

Rebecca Gray did not sleep. When the house was still she went up-stairs, eager to be alone. She shut her bedroom door softly; then she put her bra.s.s candlestick on the high bureau and looked about her.... Everything seemed strange. Here was her old-fashioned bed with its four mahogany posts like four slender obelisks; there was the fine darn in the valance of the tester; the worn strip of carpet on which she had knelt every night for all these twenty years; it was all the same, but it was all different, all unfamiliar. The room was suddenly the room where that woman had died; the old four-poster was the bed of that heartbreaking night, with sheets rumpling under a wandering hand and pillows piled beneath a beautiful, dying head; not her own bed, smooth and decorous and neat, with her own fine darn in the tester valance. She did not know the room as it was now; she did not know herself; nor Robert; nor that--that--_that woman_. She sat down, suddenly a little faint with the effort of readjusting a belief of twenty-two years. "She was a wicked woman," she said, out loud; and her astounded face stared back at her from the dim mirror over the mantel-piece. After a while she got up and began to walk back and forth; sometimes she drew a deep breath; once she laughed. "A wicked woman!" ... Now he would know. Now he would see. And he would loathe her. He would hate her. He would--her lip drooped suddenly from its fierce, unconscious smile; he would--suffer. Yes; suffer, of course.

But that couldn't be helped. Just at first he would suffer. Then he would hate her so much that he would not suffer. Not suffer? It came over her with a pang that there is no suffering so dreadful as that which comes with hating. However, she could not help that. Truth was truth! All the years of her hungry wifehood rose up, eager for revenge; her mind went hurriedly, with ecstasy, over the contrast; her painful, patient, conscientious endeavor to do her best for him. Her self-sacrifice, her actual deprivations--"I haven't had a new bonnet for--for four years!" she thought; and her lip quivered at the pitifulness of so slight a thing. But it was the whole tenor of her life. _She_ had no vacations in the mountains; she would have liked new valances, but she spent hours in darning her old ones to save his money; she had turned her black silk twice; she had only had two black silks in twenty years. All the great things she had done, all the petty things she had suffered, rose up in a great wave of merit before her; and against it--what? Hideous deceit! Oh, how he would despise the creature! Then she winced; he would--suffer? Well, she couldn't help that. It was the truth, and he had got to face it. She was walking up and down, whispering to herself, a sobbing laugh on her lips, when suddenly, as she pa.s.sed the mirror, she had a dim, crazy vision of herself that struck her motionless. A moment later she took the candle, and with one hand clutching for support at the high mantel-shelf--for her knees were shaking under her--held it close to the gla.s.s and peered into the black depths. Her pale, quivering face, ravaged with tears, stared back at her, like some poor ghost more ugly even than in life. "_A wicked woman._" Yes--yes--yes; and he would have to know it. But when he knew it, what then? If his eyes opened to sin, would they open to--

"I have tried to make him comfortable," she said, faintly.

Suddenly she put the candle down and sank into a chair, covering her face with her poor, gaunt hands....

And so the night pa.s.sed.... The dawn was dim and rainy. It was about four o'clock that Alice, sitting on the floor, sleeping heavily, her head on the cushion of the chair, started, bewildered, at the noise of the opening door. Rebecca, in her gray dressing-gown, one hand shielding the flare of her candle, came abruptly into the room.

"Alice," she said, harshly, and stopped by the empty bed; then her eyes found the figure on the floor ("you ought to be in bed"), she said, in a brief aside; then: "Alice, I've been thinking it over. You can't take that money."

"I don't understand," Alice said, confused with sleep and tears.

"You can't take that money. If you do, your father would have to know.

And he never must--he never must."

Alice pulled herself up from the floor and sat down in her big chair.

"Not take the money?" she said, in a dazed way; "but it's mine."

"That's why you needn't take it. Thank G.o.d it was left to you, not just to 'her heirs.' Alice, I've gone all over it. I--I wanted you to take it"--Rebecca's voice broke; "yes, I--did."

"Well, it's mine," Alice repeated, bewildered.

Rebecca struck her hands together. "Yours not to take! Don't you see?

You can save your father."

Alice, cringing, dropped her head on her breast with a broken word.

"Don't be a fool," the older woman said, trembling. "He's been your father ever since you were born. And it would be a pretty return for his love to tell him--"

Alice burst out crying; her step-mother softened.

"I am sorry for you, you poor girl. But, oh, Alice, think, _think_ of your father!" She clasped her hands and stood, trembling; she took a step forward, almost as if she would kneel.

"If he would feel so dreadfully," Alice said, at last, "why--we needn't tell him where the money comes from."