Whitney grunted.  His face was inscrutable.  He paced the length of the room twice; he stood at the window gazing out at the arbors, at the bees buzzing contentedly, at the flies darting across the sifting sunbeams.  “Beautiful place, this,” said he at last; “very homelike.  No wonder you’re a happy man.”  A pause.  “As to the other matter, I’ll see.  No doubt I can stop this through the courts, if you push me to it.”

“Not without giving us a chance to explain,” replied Scarborough; “and the higher courts may agree with us that we ought to defend the university’s rights against your railway friends and your ‘labor’ men whom you sent down here to cause the strike.”

“Rubbish!” said Whitney; and he laughed.  “Rubbish!” he repeated.  “It’s not a matter either for argument or for anger.”  He took his hat, made a slight ironic bow, and was gone.

He spent the next morning with Arthur, discussing the main phases of the business, with little said by either about the vast new project.  They lunched together in the car, which was on a siding before the offices, ready to join the early afternoon express.  Arthur was on his guard against Whitney, but he could not resist the charm of the financier’s manner and conversation.  Like all men of force, Whitney had great magnetism, and his conversation was frank to apparent indiscretion, a most plausible presentation of the cynical philosophy of practical life as it is lived by men of bold and generous nature.

“That assessment scheme was yours, wasn’t it?” he said, when he and Arthur had got on terms of intimacy.

“The first suggestion came from me,” admitted Arthur.

“A great stroke,” said Whitney.  “You will arrive, young man.  I thought it was your doing, because it reminded me of your father.  I never knew a more direct man than he, yet he was without an equal at flanking movements.  What a pity his mind went before he died!  My first impulse was to admire his will.  But, now that I’ve come to know you, I see that if he had lived to get acquainted with you he’d have made a very; different disposition of the family property.  As it is, it’s bound to go to pieces.  No board ever managed anything successfully.  It’s always a man—­one man.  In this case it ought to be you.  But the time will come—­soon, probably—­when your view will conflict with that of the majority of the board.  Then out you’ll go; and your years of intelligent labor will be destroyed.”

It was plain in Arthur’s face that this common-sense statement of the case produced instant and strong effect.  He merely said:  “Well, one must take that risk.”

“Not necessarily,” replied Whitney; he was talking in the most careless, impersonal way.  “A man of your sort, with the strength and the ability you inherit, and with the power that they give you to play an important part in the world, doesn’t let things drift to ruin.  I intend, ultimately, to give my share of the Ranger-Whitney Company to Tecumseh—­I’m telling you this in confidence.”