as a large family, and Susan will
not permit him to deprive it of a dollar for her benefit. As you say,
she is not strong; but in spite of that she needs no man's patronage.
The finest qualities, Jasper, the most elevated spirit. A little too
conscientious, perhaps; and, although she is thirty-nine, curiously
ignorant of the world; but rare ... rare. It almost seems as if there
were a conspiracy to keep ugly truths away from her."

Truths, Jasper Penny thought bitterly, such as had just been revealed in
Stephen's office. There was, it seemed, nothing he could do for Susan
Brundon. He envied the lawyer his position of familiar adviser, the ease
with which the other spoke her name: Susan. He rose, fumbling with a
jade seal. "Come, Eunice," he said, the lines deepening about his mouth
and eyes. Stephen Jannan assisted him into the heavy, furred coat.
"Well, Jasper," he remarked sympathetically, "if we could but look
ahead, if we were older in our youth, yes, and younger in our increasing
age, the world would be a different place." He held out to Eunice a
newly minted Brazilian goldpiece. "Good-bye," he addressed her; "command
me if I can be of any use." She clutched the gold tightly, and Jasper
Penny led her out into the winter street. "We must have dinner," he said
gravely. "With some yellow rock candy," she added, "and syllabubs."

XVI

He returned to Myrtle Forge from New York with a mingled sense of
pleasure and the feeling that his place was unsupportably empty. The
loneliness of which he had been increasingly conscious seemed to have
its focus in his house. The following morning he walked restlessly down
the short, steep descent to the Forge, lying on its swift water diverted
from Canary Creek. Unlike a great many iron families of increasing
prosperity, the Pennys had not erected the unsightly buildings of their
manufacturing about the scene of their initial activity and mansion.
Jasper's father, Daniel Barnes Penny, under whose hand their success had
largely multiplied, had grouped their first rolling mill and small nail
works by the canal at Jaffa, preserving the pastoral aspect of Myrtle
Forge, with its farmland and small, ancient, stone buildings.

Jasper had only made some unimportant changes at the Forge itself--the
pigs were subjected to the working of two hearths now, the chafery,
where the greater part of the sulphur was burned out, and the finery.
The old system of bellows had been replaced by a