, watched for
her and feared, with sickening fear, that she might never come again!

"I suppose, since Con's death isn't on my head, you felt that you could
forgive me, eh?"

"Well, something like that, Uncle William."

"What business is it of yours what I do with my money--or my nephew?"

These two never approached each other by conventional lines. Their
absences were periods in which to store vital topics and
questions--their meetings were a series of explosive outbursts.

"None of my business, Uncle William, but if I could not approve, why--"

"Approve! Huh! Who are you that you should judge, approve, or disapprove
your elders?"

There was no answer to this. Lynda wanted to laugh, but feared she might
cry. The hard, indignant words belied the quivering gladness of the
voice that greeted her in every tone with its relief and surrender.

"I've got a good deal to say to you, girl. It is well you came
to-day--you might otherwise have been too late. I'm planning a long
journey."

Lynda started.

"A--long journey?" she said. Through the past years, since the dread
disease had attacked Truedale, his travelling had been confined to
passing to and from bedchamber and library in the wheelchair.

"You--you think I jest?" There was a grim humour in the burning eyes.

"I do not know."

"Well, then, I'll tell you. I am quite serious. While I have been exiled
from your attentions--chained to this rock" (he struck the arms of the
chair like a passionate child), "I have reached a conclusion I have
always contemplated, more or less. Now that I have recognized that the
time will undoubtedly come when you, Con--the lot of you--will clear
out, I have decided to prove to you all that I am not quite the
dependant you think me."

"Why--what can you mean, Uncle William?"

This was a new phase and Lynda bent across the dog at her knee and put
her hand on the arm of the chair. She was frightened, aroused. Truedale
saw this and laughed a dry, mirthless laugh.

"Oh! a chair that can roll the length of this house can roll the
distance I desire to go. Money can pay for anything--anything! Thank
God, I have money, plenty of it. It means power--even to such a thing as
I am. Power, Lynda, power! It can snarl and unsnarl lives; it can buy
favour and cause terror. Think what I would have been without it all
these years. Think! Why, I have bargained with it; crushed with it;
threatened and beckoned with it--now I am going to play wit