pth of what seemed like devotional reverie
contributed more than anything else to her air of separation and
remoteness.

"Isn't it very serious--when there's anything wrong with estates?"

He answered readily, still forcing a tone of careless matter-of-fact.

"Of course it's serious. Everything is serious in business. Your
father's affairs are just where they can be settled--now. But if we put
it off any longer it might not be so easy. Men often have to take charge
of one another's affairs--and straighten them out--and advance one
another money--and all that--in business."

She looked away from him again, absently. She appeared not to be
listening. There was something in her manner that advised him of the
uselessness of saying anything more in that vein. After a while she
folded her work, smoothing it carefully across her knee. The only sign
she gave of being unusually moved was in rising from her chair and going
to the open window, where she stood with her back to him, apparently
watching the dartings from point to point of a sharp-eyed gray squirrel.

Rising as she did, he stood waiting for her to turn and say something
else. Now that the truth was dawning on her, it seemed to him as well to
allow it to grow clear. It would show her the futility of further
opposition. He would have been glad to keep her ignorant; he regretted
the error into which she herself unwittingly had led him; but, since it
had been committed, it would not be wholly a disaster if it summoned her
to yield.

Having come to this conclusion, he had time to make another observation
while she still stood with her back to him. It was to consider himself
fortunate in having ceased to be in love with her. In view of all the
circumstances, it was a great thing to have passed through that phase
and come out of it. He had read somewhere that a man is never twice in
love with the same person. If that were so, he could fairly believe
himself immune, as after a certain kind of malady. If it were not for
this he would have found in her hostility to his efforts and her
repugnance to his person a temptation--a temptation to which he was
specially liable in regard to living things--to feel that it was his
right to curb the spirit and tame the rebellion of whatever was restive
to his control. There was something in this haughty, high-strung
creature, poising herself in silence to stand upright in the face of
fate, that would have called forth his impulse to d