he course I should have taken. You
will advise me that it is still not too late when you have heard what I
am going to say. Your face is like--a rock."

"It is because your tragedy is mine," he said.

She turned her eyes from him. The color in her cheeks deepened. It was a
vivid, feverish glow. "I was born rich, enormously, hatefully rich," she
said in the low, unimpassioned voice of a confessional. "I don't
remember father or mother. I lived always with my Grandfather Standish
and my Uncle Peter Standish. Until I was thirteen I had my Uncle Peter,
who was grandfather's brother, and lived with us. I worshiped Uncle
Peter. He was a cripple. From young manhood he had lived in a
wheel-chair, and he was nearly seventy-five when he died. As a baby that
wheel-chair, and my rides in it with him about the great house in which
we lived, were my delights. He was my father and mother, everything that
was good and sweet in life. I remember thinking, as a child, that if God
was as good as Uncle Peter, He was a wonderful God. It was Uncle Peter
who told me, year after year, the old stories and legends of the
Standishes. And he was always happy--always happy and glad and seeing
nothing but sunshine though he hadn't stood on his feet for nearly sixty
years. And my Uncle Peter died when I was thirteen, five days before my
birthday came. I think he must have been to me what your father was
to you."

He nodded. There was something that was not the hardness of rock in his
face now, and John Graham seemed to have faded away.

"I was left, then, alone with my Grandfather Standish," she went on. "He
didn't love me as my Uncle Peter loved me, and I don't think I loved
him. But I was proud of him. I thought the whole world must have stood
in awe of him, as I did. As I grew older I learned the world _was_
afraid of him--bankers, presidents, even the strongest men in great
financial interests; afraid of him, and of his partners, the Grahams,
and of Sharpleigh, who my Uncle Peter had told me was the cleverest
lawyer in the nation, and who had grown up in the business of the two
families. My grandfather was sixty-eight when Uncle Peter died, so it
was John Graham who was the actual working force behind the combined
fortunes of the two families. Sometimes, as I now recall it, Uncle Peter
was like a little child. I remember how he tried to make me understand
just how big my grandfather's interests were by telling me that if two
dollars were taken