the memory
of him that remained, save as now and then a girl in a far-away Kansas
town remembered a June evening when a discus shied out from its course
and rolled to the door of a rose-arbor.

But "Eden," as a country estate, lost nothing by the passing of the
husband of its lady and mistress, who spared none of the Darby dollars
to make both the town and country home delightful in all appointments,
hoping and believing that in her policy of stubbornness and force she
could have her way, and bring back to the East the girl whom she would
never invite to return, the girl whose future she had determined to
control. The three years had found Jerusha Darby's will to have Jerry
Swaim become her heir under her own terms--mistaking dependence for
appreciation, and idleness for happiness--had ceased to be will and
become a mania, the ruling passion of her years of old age. She never
dreamed that she was being adroitly managed by her husband's relative,
Eugene Wellington, but she did recognize, and, strangely enough, resent,
the fact that the Darby strain in his blood was proving itself in his
ability, not to earn dollars, but to make dollars earn dollars once they
were put plentifully into his hands.

Since Mrs. Darby had only one life-purpose--to leave her property to
Jerry Swaim under her own terms--it galled her to think of it passing to
the hands of the relatives of the late Cornelius. She believed that love
of Eugene would bring Jerry back, for she was Lesa's own romance-loving
child--even if the luxuries that wealth can offer should fail; and she
had coddled Eugene Wellington for this very purpose. But after three
years he had failed to satisfy her. She was becoming slowly but
everlastingly set on one thing. She would put her property elsewhere by
will--when she was through with it. She could not do without Eugene as
long as she lived--which would be indefinitely, of course. But she would
have her say--and (in a whisper) it would _not_ be a Darby nor _kin_ of
a Darby who might be sitting around now, waiting for her to pass to her
fathers, who would possess it.

In this intense state of mind she called Eugene out to "Eden" in the
late May of the third year of Jerry Swaim's stay in Kansas. The
rose-arbor was aglow with the same blossoming beauty as of old, and all
the grounds were a dream of May-time verdure.

Eugene Wellington, driving out from the city in a big limousine car,
found them more to his taste than ever b