You must marry Dorothy
Fair, and Madelon is going to marry Lot. Leaving everything else out
of the question, it is out of your power to say anything on account
of the money which you will lose by her marriage with him. You know
what she might think."

"Curse the money!" Burr cried out. "Curse the money and the position
and all the damned lot of bubbles that come between a man and what's
worth more, and will last!"

"Burr, don't talk so!"

"I can't help it, mother. I mean it. Curse it, I say, and the
infernal weakness that makes a man see double on women's faces when
there's only one woman in his heart! Mother, why didn't you know
about that last, so you could tell me when I was a boy?"

His mother colored a little. "I never taught you to be fickle," she
said, with a kind of shamed bewilderment.

"I never have been fickle. This is something else worse." Burr
looked at his mother again, with the old expression of his when he
had come in hurt from play. No matter how long Burr Gordon might
live, no matter what brave deeds he might do--and there was brave
stuff in him, for he would have gone to the gallows rather than
betray Madelon--there would always be in him the appeal of a child to
the woman who loved him. "Mother, I don't know how to bear it," he
said.

"You must bear it like a man."

"It is hard to bear the consequence of unmanly conduct like a man,"
said Burr, shortly; then he went out, as if the old comfort from his
mother had failed him. As for her, she finished heeling her stocking,
and then went out into the kitchen and made a pudding that her son
loved for his dinner.

Burr went back up-stairs to his cold chamber, and watched for Madelon
to come out of Lot's house. It seemed to him she was there an
eternity, but in reality it was only a half-hour.

She had found Lot sitting as usual before the fire with a
leather-covered volume on his knees. "I have come," she said,
standing just inside the door; then she started at the look he gave
her. There was a significance in it which she could not understand.

He did not say a word for full five minutes while she waited. He did
not even ask her to be seated. "Do you know the date?" he asked then,
harshly. There was no hint of roses and honey in his speech and
manner to offend her like his letter.

"Yes, I do."

"You know the month is up on Monday?"

"I am not likely to forget."

"True," said Lot; "it is the last thing a girl will forget--the day
set