nephew, his advantage was considerable.  But he suddenly declared he wouldn’t be a broker any more—­and you’d never guess his absurd reason:  simply because some stock he held or didn’t hold went up or down or something on a rumour in the street that Mr. Russell Sage was extremely ill!  He said that this brought him to his senses.  He says to me, ’Mater, I’ve not met Mr. Sage, you know, but from what I hear of him it would be irrational to place myself in a position where I should have to experience emotion of any sort at news of the old gentleman’s taking-off.  An event so agreeable to the natural order of God’s providence, so plausible, so seemly, should not be endowed with any arbitrary and artificial significance, especially of a monetary character—­one must be able to view it absolutely without emotion of any sort, either of regret or rejoicing—­one must remain conscientiously indifferent as to when this excellent old gentleman passes on to the Golden Shore’—­but you know the breezy way in which Harold will sometimes talk.  Only now he seems really sobered by this new attachment—­”

“But if he is already married—­”

“Yes, yes—­if you can call it married—­a ceremony performed by one of those common magistrates—­quite without the sanction of the Church—­but all that is past, and he is now ready to marry one who can be a wife to him—­only my conscience did hurt me a little, and brother Cyrus said to me, ’You see Linford and tell him I sent you.  Linford is a man of remarkable breadth, of rare flexibility.’”

“Yes, and of course Allan was emphatically discouraging.”  Again she was recalling the fervour with which he had declared himself on this point on that last day when he actually made her believe in him.

“Oh, the Doctor is broad!  He is what I should call adaptable.  He said by all means to extricate Harold from this wretched predicament, not only on account of the property interests involved, but on account of his moral and spiritual welfare; that, while in spirit he holds deathlessly to the indissolubility of the marriage tie, still it is unreasonable to suppose that God ever joined Harold to a person so much his inferior, and that we may look forward to the real marriage—­that on which the sanctity of the home is truly based—­when the law has freed him from this boyish entanglement.  Oh, my dear, I feel so relieved to know that my boy can have a wife from his own class—­and still have it right up there—­with Him, you know!” she concluded with an upward glance, as Nancy watched her with eyes grown strangely quiet, almost steely—­watched her as one might watch an ant.  She had the look of one whose will had been made suddenly to stand aside by some great inner tumult.

When her caller had gone she dropped back into the chair, absently pulling a glove through the fingers of one hand—­her bag and parasol on the floor at her feet.  One might have thought her on the point of leaving instead of having just come.  The shadows were deepening in the corners of the room and about her half-shut eyes.