“How will that affect my—­my position in other ways?” she demanded, in a suddenly shrewd, suspicious tone.  “Not at all,” the lawyer assured her.  She sobbed once, emotionally; and Eunice regarded her with a wide, unsparing curiosity.  “A stranger to me,” she gasped, with a paper white face and fluttering eyelids.  Jasper Penny ejaculated sharply, “How much, Essie?” In a moment, he judged, familiar with a potential hysteria, she might faint, scream; there were clerks, people, in the next rooms.  On the brink of collapse she hesitated, twisting her purple kid gloves.

“Ten thousand dollars,” she said.

Stephen Jannan glanced swiftly at his cousin, and the latter nodded.  “That is satisfactory,” Jannan announced.  “A mere formality—­witnesses.”  Essie Scofield traced her signature in round, unformed characters; Jasper Penny followed with a hasty, small script; and Eunice, seated at the impressive table, printed her name slowly, blotting it with a trailing sleeve.  The lawyer swung back the door of a heavy safe, and took out a package of white bills of exchange on the Bank of Pennsylvania.  Essie counted the notes independently, thrust the money into a steel-beaded reticule with silk cords, and rose, gathering together her cashmere shawl.  She ignored Eunice totally in the veiled gaze she directed at Jasper Penny.  “It is better,” she told him, “if you write first when you expect to visit me.  Really, the last time, with some friends there, you were impossible.”  He bowed stiffly.  “Don’t let a sense of duty bring you,” she concluded boldly.  “I get on surprisingly well as it is, as it is,” she reiterated, and, he thought, her voice bore almost a threat.

When she had gone the two men sat gazing in a common perplexity at the child.  Stephen Jannan’s lips were compressed, Jasper Penny’s face was slightly drawn as if by pain.  Eunice was investigating a thick stick of vermilion sealing wax and a steel die.  “Well?” Jannan queried, nodding toward the table.  “I thought something of Burlington,” Penny replied, “but decided to place her in New York.  Want to give her all the chance possible.  I intend, at what seems the proper time, to secure her my own name.”  He stopped the objection clouding his cousin’s countenance.  “We won’t argue that, please.  Now about the will; the provision must be explicit and generous.  There, at least, I am able to meet a just requirement.”  Jasper Penny’s will was produced, a codicil projected, appended, and witnesses recalled.

“I wanted to inquire about Miss Brundon,” Jasper said finally, the business despatched.  “She seems to me very fragile for the conducting of an Academy.  Is there no family, men, to support her?  And her institution—­does it continue to progress well?”