e said
something about Rockwood,--and was to be back shortly."

"If he has gone to Rockwood, I doubt if you see him before
mid-afternoon." The sneer is plainly evident here, and Grandon feels
some antagonistic blood rise.

"I suppose," he continues, in his usual courteous tone, "that it will
be best to have a business meeting as soon as possible. I will consult
Mr. Connery; an inventory was taken, I suppose."

"Yes. It is in his hands."

Wilmarth is certainly hard to get on with. To natural brusqueness is
added an evident disinclination to discuss the business. Floyd is much
too proud to seem curious, though here he has a right to know all, but
he feels that he will not be able to make much headway alone.

"I think I will return," he says. "If my brother comes in, tell him, if
you please, that I have gone home. We have not discussed any business
yet, but will begin to-morrow. Good day."

He goes back, folds up the papers, and places them carefully in his
breast-pocket, takes his hat and walks slowly out, wondering if his
father really trusted this man. He inspires Floyd with a deep,
inveterate dislike, a curious suspicion before he knows there is
anything to suspect. He wishes--ah, at that moment he feels inclined to
pay the legacies and his mother's pension, and wash his hands of the
other distasteful charge. Then some words of his father's come back:
"Remember that Eugene is young and thoughtless, and be patient."

It is very warm as he steps into the street, and he remembers a sort of
river road that used to be shady, where he has rambled many a time.
Everything is changed, the hills levelled, the valleys filled up, but
he presently finds a strip of woodland near the shore edge, and a path
much overgrown with blackberry-vines. He picks his way along, now and
then meeting with a remembered aspect, when he comes across a sort of
Swiss _chalet_ on the sloping hillside. Two peaks of roof, odd, long,
narrow windows, with diamond-shape panes of glass, a vine-covered
porch, an old woman in black, with white kerchief and high-crowned cap
suggestive of Normandy; and through an open window a man sitting at a
table, with instruments or machinery before him, engrossed with some
experiments. A peculiar, delicate face, with a high, narrow forehead,
thin white hair worn rather long and now tumbled, a drooping nose, a
snowy white, pointed beard, and thin, long fingers, as colorless as
Gertrude's.

Somewhere he has seen a p