ad died,
they were always descending upon her for brief visits in the house where
she succeeded Aunt Anne, and liking her so tumultuously, in her grown-up
state, that they pelted her with arguments based on her presumable
loneliness there and the silliness of carrying on the establishment
really as a species of home for superannuated servants. Nan honestly
liked the cousins, in a casual way, though it was as inconceivable to
her that the Boston house might be given up as it would have been to
Aunt Anne. There was, she felt, again in Aunt Anne's way, a certain
continuity of things you didn't even think of breaking. Now she was
seeking the Seaburys for reasons of her own. They had to be suitably
told that Aunt Anne had left her money away from them as from her, and
naturally, though ridiculously, to "that Raven she was always making a
fool of herself about." They were ruthless of speech within family
conclave, though any one of them would have thought more than twice
about calling Aunt Anne any sort of fool, in her lifetime, even at a
distance safely beyond hearing. Raven was not, if Nan could forestall
the possibility, to be assaulted by mounting waves of family animosity.

Raven was glad, for once, to get rid of her, to find she was removing
herself from the domestic turmoil he had created. There could not be the
triangular discussions inevitable if she and Dick fell upon him at once,
nor should he have to bear the warmth of her tumultous sympathy. Dick
had evidently told her nothing, and he even gathered that she was going
without notice to Dick. Then Raven began a systematic and rapid
onslaught on his immediate affairs, to put them in order. Mr. Whitney,
Anne's lawyer, who had always seemed to regard him in a disconcerting
way as belonging to Anne, or her belonging in some undefined fashion to
him, opened out expansively on the provisions of the will. He most
sincerely congratulated Raven. Of course it was to have been expected,
but----! Raven kept miserably to the proprieties of the moment. He
listened with all due reserve, silent on the subject of Anne's letter.
That was his affair, he thought, his and Nan's; unless, indeed, it was
nobody's affair but Anne Hamilton's, and he was blindly to constitute
himself the unreasoning agent of her trust. That must be thought out
later. If he undertook it now, piling it on the pack of unsubstantial
miseries he was carrying, he would be swamped utterly. He could only
drop it int