taking up Goethe reads to him. The tense, worn face
softens. Now and then he drops into a little doze. He puts his hand out
to Grandon with a grateful smile, and so the two sit until nearly noon,
when the doctor comes.

Floyd follows him down-stairs.

"Don't ask me to reconsider my verdict," he says, in answer to the
other's look. "The issues of life and death are _not_ in our hands. If
you really understood his state, you would wonder that he is still
alive. Keep all bad tidings from him," the doctor adds rather louder to
Denise. "Tell him pleasurable things only; keep him cheerful. It cannot
be for very long. And watch him well."

"Where is Miss St. Vincent?" asks Grandon, with a very pardonable
curiosity.

"She has gone out. He will have it so. She does not dream the end is so
near." And Denise wipes her old eyes. "Mr. Grandon, is it possible that
dreadful man must marry her?"

"Oh, I hope not!"

"He is very determined. And ma'm'selle has been brought up to obey, not
like your American girls. If her father asked her to go through fire,
she would, for his sake. And in a convent they train girls to marry and
to respect their husbands, not to dream about gay young lovers. But my
poor lamb! to be given to such a man, and she so young!"

"No, do not think of it," Grandon says, huskily.

"You shall see her this evening, sir, if you will come. I will speak to
master."

Grandon goes on to the factory. Wilmarth is away, and he rambles
through the place, questioning the workmen. There are some complaints.
The wool is not as good as it was formerly, and the new machinery
bothers. The foreman does not seem to understand it, and is quite sure
it is a failure. Mr. Wilmarth has no confidence in it, he says.

Then Grandon makes a thorough inspection of some old books. They
certainly _did_ make money in his father's time, but expenses of late
have been much larger. Why are they piling up goods in the warehouse
and not trying to sell? It seems to him as if there was no real head to
the business. Can it be that he must take this place and push matters
through to a successful conclusion? It seems to him that he could
really do better than has been done for the last six months.

It is mid-afternoon when he starts homeward. He will take the old
rambling path and rest his weary brain a little before he presents
himself to madame. She has a right to feel quite neglected, and yet how
can he play amiable with all this on his mi