While Miss Sabrina added jealously, "I feel that there could be little question of any young woman on earth rejecting our dear boy."
Mr. Beekman made a comprehensive gesture which waived all considerations of feeling.
"Before I go I will make one suggestion," he said. "I am not empowered to make it, but between old friends professional reserve may be banished. The whole estate being thus at will, such singular conditions attached to the inheritance, the matter lying wholly between these two heirs, I really feel as if some possible compromise might be found acceptable, some division which should wrong no one."
But the idea of a compromise brought no response from any member of the party. Consternation was apparent on every face. Mrs. Van Voorst ended a painful moment of suspense by exclaiming, after a little shriek, "But, Mr. Beekman, to divide is to spoil! Pacts are facts, and duty is duty! Of course, we may say that we expected that the house on Madison Avenue and all the money ought to come to us without any drawback. Of course too, when I think of the strange girl, a girl whom we have not watched grow up, who has to be accepted along with the property, I might feel inclined to say to her, 'Take half the money and do not come to invade our happy household.' But after a long life one learns to be—prudent. I am old, and I am wise. Life is very—very—expensive. It is well to take all the money one can get."
"And it would be a pity to disappoint the poor girl," said Mrs. Vanderweyer. "Perhaps, Ollie, dear, you would like to have us send for her, so that you may see her before you fairly make up your own mind."
Oliver, who had followed the conversation with no little interest, now said, quite simply, "Yes, I should like it very much."
Mr. Beekman contrived to take his leave of the household without showing his real emotions. He had a feeling of having missed his aim,—indeed, of having gone wide of his mark.
IV.
Nothing could seem more contradictory, incomprehensible, inconceivable, than for Mrs. Hunter to die and leave a will which broke every promise she had ever made to Ethel Fairlie. It was a strange answer to the letter which Ethel had written with a heart all love and belief, but in no moment of desolation and disappointment did Ethel fail to understand. Her letter, telling of her engagement to Basil Thorpe, had come to the poor woman as she lay dying. It had touched her hands, it had been pressed to her lips in those final moments of agonized consciousness. When the full news came to Ethel, what she felt was a longing to pierce that wall of death, to penetrate those dark labyrinths which separate mortals from immortality, to be able to tell
