gainst
which he had struggled in vain. "You are very comfortable now, ain't
you? And I'll see that you are well provided for after my death. John
Henry hasn't anything except his salary, I reckon."

Marriage as an economic necessity was perfectly comprehensible to him,
but it was difficult for him to conceive of anybody indulging in it
simply as a matter of sentiment. That April afternoon was so far away
now that it had ceased to exist even as an historical precedent.

"Yes, but I want to marry him, and I am going to," replied Susan
decisively.

"What arrangements would you make about your mother? It seems to me that
your mother needs your attention."

"Of course I couldn't leave mother. If you agree to it, John Henry is
willing to come here to live as long as I have to look after her. If
not, I shall take her away with me; I have spoken to her, and she is
perfectly willing to go."

The ten years which had left Cyrus at a standstill had developed his
daughter from a girl into a woman. She spoke with the manner of one who
realizes that she holds the situation in her hands, and he yielded to
this assumption of strength as he would have yielded ten years ago had
she been clever enough to use it against him. It was his own manner in a
more attractive guise, if he had only known it; and the Treadwell
determination to get the thing it wanted most was asserting itself in
Susan's desire to win John Henry quite as effectively as it had asserted
itself in Cyrus's passion to possess the Dinwiddie and Central Railroad.
Though the ends were different, the quality which moved father and
daughter towards these different ends was precisely the same. In Cyrus,
it was force degraded; in Susan, it was force refined; but the peculiar
attribute which distinguished and united them was the possession of the
power to command events.

"Take your mother away?" he repeated. "Why, where on earth would you
take her?"

"Then you'll have to agree to John Henry's coming here. It won't make
any difference to you, of course. You needn't see him except at the
table."

"But what would James say about it?" he returned, with the cowardice
natural to the habitual bully. The girl had character, certainly, and
though he disliked character in a woman, he was obliged to admit that
she had not failed to make an impression.

"James won't care, and besides," she added magnificently, "it is none of
his business."

"And it's none of mine, either, I reck