d be in slavery--slavery to a bad man--and our
souls would die--"

Her voice dropped--drowned in the passion of its own entreaty.

Faversham pressed her hands, released them, and slowly straightened
himself to his full height, as he stood beside her on the hearthrug.
A vision rose and spread through the mind. In place of the little
sitting-room, the modest home of refined women living on a slender
income, he saw the great gallery at Threlfall with its wonderful
contents, and the series of marvellous rooms he had now examined and set
in order. Vividly, impressively the great house presented itself to him
in memory, in all its recovered grace and splendour; a treasury of art,
destined to be a place of pilgrimage for all who adore that lovely record
of itself in things subtle and exquisite which the human spirit has
written on time. Often lately he had wrung permission from Melrose to
take an English or foreign visitor through some of the rooms. He had
watched their enthusiasm and their ardour. And mingled with such
experience, there had been now for months the intoxicating sense that
everything in that marvellous house was potentially his--Claude
Faversham's, and would all some day come into his hands, the hands of a
man specially prepared by education and early circumstance to enjoy, to
appreciate.

And the estate. As in a map, he saw its green spreading acres, its
multitude of farms, its possessions of all kind, spoilt and neglected by
one man's caprice, but easily to be restored by the prudent care of his
successor. He realized himself in the future as its owner; the inevitable
place that it would give him in the political and social affairs of the
north. And the estate was not all. Behind the estate lay the great
untrammelled fortune drawn from quite other sources of wealth; how great
he was only now beginning to know.

A great sigh shook him--a sigh of decision. What he had been listening to
had been the quixotism of a tender heart, ignorant of life and affairs,
and all the wider possibilities open to man's will. He could not yield.
In time she must be the one to yield. And she would yield. Let him wait,
and be patient. There were many ways in which to propitiate, to work upon
her.

He looked down upon her gravely, his dark pointed face quivering a
little. Instinctively she drew back. Her expression changed.

"I can't do that." His voice was low but firm. "I feel the call to me.
And after all, Melrose has clai