for long."

He got up and went blindly out of the room, and his son heard him
muttering, "Not for long--not for long, now," as he wandered about the
house and went aimlessly into room after room.

Old Jacob Dolph had always been an indulgent parent, and none kinder
ever lived. But we should hardly call him indulgent to-day. Good as he
was to his boy, it had always been with the goodness of a superior. It
was the way of his time. A half-century ago the child's position was
equivocal. He lived by the grace of God and his parents, and their duty
to him was rather a duty to society, born of an abstract morality. Love
was given him, not as a right, but as an indulgence. And young Jacob
Dolph, in all his grief and anxiety, was guiltily conscious of a secret
thrill of pleasure--natural enough, poor boy!--in his sudden elevation
to the full dignity of manhood, and his father's abdication of the
headship of the house.

A little later in the day, urged again by the old gentleman, he put on
his hat and went to see Abram Van Riper. Mr. Van Riper was now, despite
his objections to the pernicious institution of country-houses, a near
neighbor of the Dolphs. He had yielded, not to fashion, but to yellow
fever, and at the very first of the outbreak had bought a house on the
outskirts of Greenwich Village, and had moved there in unseemly haste.
He had also registered an unnecessarily profane oath that he would never
again live within the city limits.

When young Jacob Dolph came in front of the low, hip-roofed house, whose
lower story of undressed stone shone with fresh whitewash, Mr. Van Riper
stood on his stoop and checked his guest at the front gate, a dozen
yards away. From this distance he jabbed his big gold-headed cane toward
the young man, as though to keep him off.

[Illustration]

"Stay there, sir--you, sir, you Jacob Dolph!" he roared, brandishing the
big stick. "Stand back, I tell you! Don't come in, sir! Good-day,
sir--good-day, good-day, good-day!" (This hurried excursus was in
deference to a sense of social duty.) "Keep away, confound you, keep
away--consume your body, sir, stay where you are!"

"I'm not coming any nearer, Mr. Van Riper," said Jacob Dolph, with a
smile which he could not help.

"I can't have you in here, sir," went on Mr. Van Riper, with no
abatement of his agitation. "I don't want to be inhospitable; but I've
got a wife and a son, sir, and you're infectious--damn it, sir, you're
infectious!"