“Ja, but—­”

“With that money you can buy my happiness living, and he don’t want it or need it dead.”

Within the quick vise of her two hands Mrs. Meyerburg clasped her face, all quivering and racked with sobs.  “I can’t hear it.  It’s like she was sticking knifes into me.”

“The marquis has the kind of blood we need to give this family a boost.  We can be big, ma.  Big, I tell you.  I can have a crest embroidered in two colors in my linens.  That inside clique that looks down on us now can do some looking up then.  The boys don’t need to know about that million, ma.  Just let me have the marquis here to-morrow to meet his new brothers, ma, like there was nothing unusual.  I’ll pay it back to you in a million ways.  The Memorial will come in time.  Everything will come in time.  Make me the happiest girl in the world, ma.  He’ll ask me to-night if I let him.  Get the Memorial plans out of your head for a while, anyway!  Just for a while!”

“Not so long as I got in me the strength to send down them plans to Goldfinger’s office this afternoon with my message to go ahead.  I don’t invite no marquis here to-morrow for family dinner if I got to get him here with a million dollars’ worth of bait.  I—­”

“Mamma!”

“Go and tell him your stingy old mamma would rather build a Home for the Old and Poor in memory of the grandest man what ever lived than give a snip like him, what never did a lick of work in his life, a fortune so he should have with it a good time at Monte Carlo.  Just go tell him!  Tell him!”

She was trembling now so that she could scarcely withdraw from the bedside, but her voice had lost none of its gale-like quality.

“Go tell him!  Maybe it does him good he should hear.”  And in spite of her ague she crossed the vast room, slamming the door so that a great shudder ran over the room.

On the bed that had been lifted bodily from the Grand Trianon of Marie Antoinette, its laces upheaved about her like billows in anger, Rebecca Meyerburg lay with her face to the ceiling, raw sobs distorting it.

Steadying herself without that door, her hand laid between her breasts and slightly to the left, as if there a sharp pain had cut her, Mrs. Meyerburg leaned to the wall a moment, and, gaining quick composure, proceeded steadily enough across the wide aisle of hall, her hand following a balustrade.

A servant intercepted her half-way.  “Madam—­”

“Kemp, from here when I look down in the lower hall, all them ferns look yellow on top.  I want you should please cut them!”

“Yes, madam.  Mrs. Fischlowitz, madam, has been waiting down in the side hall for you.”

“Mrs. Fischlowitz!  For why you keep her waiting in the side hall?”

“Therese said madam was occupied.”

“Bring her right up, Kemp, in the elevator.  Her foot ain’t so good.  Right away, Kemp.”

“Yes, madam.”