There he stood, in the stairway door of the front room overlooking Jackson Square.  The grandmother and sister had been keenly debating the news and what to do about it, the elder bird fierce to stay, the younger bent on flight, and had just separated to different windows, when they heard, turned and beheld him there, a stranger in tattered gray and railway dirt, yet their own coxcomb boy from his curls to his ill-shod feet.  Flora had hardly caught her breath or believed her eyes before the grandmother was on his neck patting and petting his cheeks and head and plying questions in three languages:  When, where, how, why, how, where and when?

Dimly he reflected their fond demonstrations.  No gladness was in his face.  His speech, as hurried as theirs, answered no queries.  He asked loftily for air, soap, water and the privacy of his own room, and when they had followed him there and seen him scour face, arms, neck, and head, rub dry and resume his jacket and belt, he had grown only more careworn and had not yet let his sister’s eyes rest on his.

He had but a few hours to spend in the city, he said; had brought despatches and must carry others back by the next train.  His story, he insisted, was too long to tell before he had delivered certain battery letters; one to Victorine, two to Constance Mandeville, and so on.  Here was one to Flora, from Captain Irby; perhaps the story was in it.  At any rate, its bearer must rush along now.  He toppled his “grannie” into a rocking-chair and started away.  He “would be back as soon as ever he—­”

But Flora filled the doorway.  He had to harden his glance to hers at last.  In her breast were acutest emotions widely at war, yet in her eyes he saw only an unfeeling light, and it was the old woman behind him who alone noted how painfully the girl’s fingers were pinched upon Irby’s unopened letter.  The boy’s stare betrayed no less anger than suffering and as Flora spoke he flushed.

“Charlie,” she melodiously began, but his outcry silenced her: 

“Now, by the eternal great God Almighty, Flora Valcour, if you dare to ask me that—­” He turned to the grandmother, dropped to his knees, buried his face in her lap and sobbed.

With genuine tenderness she stroked his locks.  Yet while she did so she lifted to the sister a face lighted up with a mirth of deliverance.  To nod, toss, and nod again, was poor show for her glee; she smirked and writhed to the disdaining girl like a child at a mirror, and, though sitting thus confined, gave all the effects of jigging over the floor.  Hilary out of the way!  Kincaid eliminated, and the whole question free of him, this inheritance question so small and mean to all but her and Irby, but to him and her so large, so paramount!  Silently, but plainly to the girl, her mouth widely motioned, “Il est mort! grace”—­one hand stopped stroking long enough to make merrily the sign of cross—­“grace au ciel, il est mort!”