ial or business point of view his need of a son and
heir had grown great of late. He had never contemplated the
non-existence of one, just as he had never contemplated the
non-existence of Elizabeth. He had counted, it is true, on
overpowering the alert senses of one who had known the pinch of
poverty with superabundant evidence of the fortune that was his. He
had noted the havoc wrought to great fortunes by children brought up
to regard great wealth as the natural standard of life; he meant to
avoid that error, and in the unnatural neglect of the boy he had
believed to be his, there was less callous indifference than Charles
Aston thought: it was more the outcome of a crooked reasoning which
placed the ultimate good of his fortune above the immediate well-being
of his child. The terrible event in Liverpool that had shattered his
almost childish belief in his wife's existence had also wiped away her
fading image from his mind. The whole force of his energetic nature
was focussed on the possible personality of his son. This Christopher
of Aymer Aston's upbringing, entirely different from all he had
purposed to find in his heir, called to him across forgotten waters.
His very obstinacy and will power were matters in which Peter
rejoiced--they were qualities no Aston had implanted. He was proud of
his son and his pride clamoured to possess in entirety what was his by
right of man.

What could prevent him? He sat biting his fingertips and frowning into
the gathering twilight without--at that persistent vision of Aymer
Aston's face.

There were plenty of men in the world who would have shrugged their
shoulders over the question of Peter Masters' honesty, some who would
have accredited his lightest word and yet would have preferred a
legal buffer between them and the bargain he drove: many who
considered him a model of financial honesty. It was a matter of the
personal standpoint: perhaps none of them would have troubled to
measure the millionaire by any measure than their own. Peter's own
measure was of primitive simplicity--he never took something for
nothing, and if he placed his own value on what he bought and what he
paid, he at least believed in his own scale of prices. Had he picked
up a banknote in the street he would have lodged it with the police
unless he considered the amount only equalised his trouble in stopping
to rescue it. Had his son dragged himself up the toilsome ladder to
manhood (he ignored the possib