what he won't think! But,
of course, the more of a villain I am the less you're to be held
responsible. And there's nothing insupportable or--ludicrous about a
grievance against another man. At all events it enables him to get round
the statement you demolished him with. No, you'll see. He'll write you a
letter, correctly affectionate but rather chilly, and after that you'll
be off his mind. And if the pretty sister Sylvia alleges doesn't exist,
there'll be another one along pretty soon, who will."

She was obviously a little dazed by all this. It was the first time they
had talked of Graham since that night in his room and he knew the bruise
from that experience must still be painful to touch. So he hastened to
produce his other item of news--also provided by Sylvia.

"This is a perfectly dead secret of hers," he began. "Told me in sacred
confidence. She finished, however, by saying that she knew, of course,
I'd go straight and tell you. So to justify her penetration, I will.
Sylvia has accounted for her father's amazing change of attitude toward
Hickory Hill. It seems she's persuaded her father to give Graham's share
of it to her. She told him--what's obviously true--that she's a better
farmer now than Graham would ever be. She hates town and society and all
that, she says, and never will be happy anywhere but on a farm--anywhere,
indeed, but on that farm. He was very rough and boisterous about the
suggestion, she says, for a day or two, but finally he quieted down like
a lamb and gave in. He never has refused her anything, of course."

"But a partnership between her and Rush!" Mary cried. "It's perfectly
impossibly mad. Unless, of course ... You don't mean...?"

"Yes, that's the idea, exactly," March said. "Only Rush, as yet, knows
nothing about it. Hence the need for secrecy. Sylvia acknowledged to her
father that she couldn't possibly own a farm in partnership with a young
man of twenty-three unless she married him, but she said she'd intended
to marry Rush ever since she was twelve years old. She's confident that
he's only waiting for her eighteenth birthday to ask her to marry him,
but she says that if he doesn't, she means to ask him. And if he refuses,
she pointed out to her father, he can't do less than consent to sell the
other half of the farm to her. She treats that alternative, though, as
derisory.--And I haven't a doubt she's right. Evidently her father has
none, either.

"Well, it accounts for the c