the sole legatee?"

"Oh, I have the house, of course," said Nan, "the one here and the place
at Wake Hill. She had those only for her lifetime, you know. Yes, you're
the sole legatee."

"You haven't told anybody, have you?" he asked, in a despairing haste,
as if he were seeking about for ways to suppress the document.

She broke into an amused giggle, the note he sometimes fancied she kept
for him alone.

"Why, yes," she said, "of course I have. I telephoned Mr. Whitney, and
he was in a great state over it. He came round, and I gave it to him."

"A lawyer!" said Raven, in disgust. "A damned accurate,
precedent-preaching lawyer! Well, the fat's in the fire now. What did
you have to be so confounded previous for?"

Nan was smiling at him as if she found herself wiser than he.

"You didn't think you could tear it up, did you, Rookie?" she inquired.
"You can't, you know, except in stories."

"I don't know what I thought," he said. "Only I wish it hadn't been
done, that's all. It's a"--he ended blankly--"a mistake."

She was looking at him now in a warm, sweet way, to tell him she
understood and thanked him.

"You're afraid I sha'n't have enough," she said. "I shall. I'd ever so
much rather you had it, Rookie."

"It isn't a question," said Raven curtly, in his disaffection, "of how
much you're worth. It's simply yours, that's all, and you've got to have
it. Well, I can refuse it, I suppose. Only that's so boorish. It drags
everybody out into the open. What made her! Oh, what made her!"

"I think it's nice," said Nan comfortably. "It seems to make everything
so right. As to other people--why, it's telling them, don't you know,
you really were the one she cared most about, though she couldn't care
quite in the way you wanted her to."

He sat staring at her. What did she mean? What had she made up, in her
adequate mind, about his relation to Aunt Anne? She couldn't know how he
had fought off the yearly increasing benefits Anne had showered him
with, unless indeed Anne had told her. And it wasn't like her. Anne was
dignity itself. She kept her own counsel. She took her stately course
without the least recognition that there were peculiarities in the pace
she kept or the road she chose. She had the unconscious arrogance of her
class, a class perhaps, except as surviving in individuals, almost
extinct. She never accounted for herself, because it could not have
forced its way into her mind, from birth to death, that