lf for
brief moments of his life. She was the one being he really loved, with
whom he consulted on such affairs of importance as he felt to be within
her scope and province,--the cattle, the men on the place outside of the
household, the wisdom of buying the Baker farm; bequests to charities,
paintings, the library; and recently he had left to her judgment the
European baths and the kind of treatment which her mother had required.
Victoria had consulted with the physicians in Paris, and had made these
decisions herself. From a child she had never shown a disposition to
evade responsibility.

To his intimate business friends, Mr. Flint was in the habit of speaking
of her as his right-hand man, but she was circumscribed by her sex,--or
rather by Mr. Flint's idea of her sex,--and it never occurred to him
that she could enter into the larger problems of his life. For this
reason he had never asked himself whether such a state of affairs would
be desirable. In reality it was her sympathy he craved, and such an
interpretation of himself as he chose to present to her.

So her question was a shock. He suddenly beheld his daughter
transformed, a new personality who had been thinking, and thinking along
paths which he had never cared to travel.

"The power!" he repeated. "What do you mean by that, Victoria?"

She sat for a moment on the end of the bench, gazing at him with a
questioning, searching look which he found disconcerting. What had
happened to his daughter? He little guessed the tumult in her breast.
She herself could not fully understand the strange turn the conversation
had taken towards the gateway of the vital things.

"It is natural for men to love power, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," said Mr. Flint, uneasily. "I don't know what you're
driving at, Victoria."

"You control the lives and fortunes of a great many people."

"That's just it," answered Mr. Flint, with a dash at this opening; "my
responsibilities are tremendous. I can't relinquish them."

"There is no--younger man to take your place? Not that I mean you are
old, father," she continued, "but you have worked very hard all your
life, and deserve a holiday the rest of it."

"I don't know of any younger man," said Mr. Flint. "I don't mean to say
I'm the only person in the world who can safeguard the stockholders'
interests in the Northeastern. But I know the road and its problems. I
don't understand this from you, Victoria. It doesn't sound like you.