“I’m not such a damn’ fool as to try to argue with a woman in a rage.  You have too much brain, Mary, and at times you irritate me.  Paul is the only one in this family who soothes me.  I’ll go to him.”

“Yes,” she retorted contemptuously, “Paul will burn incense to your vanity.  Go to him.”

She turned to leave the room, but at the door she paused.  “Jefferson Edwardes will dine here this evening,” she volunteered.  “Any discourtesy to him will be an insult to me.”

* * * * *

A little strange it was, perhaps, and yet true, that Hamilton Burton, who feared no man and showed consideration to few, discovered himself standing in something like awe of his imperious sister.  At all events his outbreak of wrath subsided and that evening he gave to the man who had aroused it no intimation of its recent upflaming.

But in the days and weeks that followed, Hamilton Burton saw much of Edwardes and that very directness of gaze, that level glance which concealed nothing and evaded nothing became to him at first a small annoyance, and then a constantly aggravated irritation.  His star of Destiny rode at its zenith.  Every venture turned under his Midas hand to gold and increased power.  He mounted to succeeding heights until it seemed that like Alexander he must soon brood over the smallness of the world’s opportunity.  Colossal mergers grouped themselves into structures of stupendous strength.  His pride was bloated with successes, yet all the while across his own table he must encounter eyes that withheld reverence and politely masked something like contempt.  Some day he knew those clean-souled eyes would goad him to an outbreak.

But impulse is the menace to a strong man’s strength, and no one save Hamilton Burton himself suspected that this antipathy was growing into an obsession.

Besides, there were more important matters to consider, and a hundred active enemies to watch.  Any such moment of relaxed vigilance as he himself had seized to overthrow the preeminence of others would be used to overthrow his own.

While he rode on the highest crest of Fortune’s wave the one member of his family who had remained unchanged fell ill.  For a week all else was forgotten while the Burton family waited the outcome in Aunt Hannah’s bedroom.

That austere old spinster talked in her delirium of other days and denied that they had altered.  In broken rambling words she took them all back with her to a life they had put behind them.  The names of cows and horses in whose care Hamilton had so many hundred times taken down and put up the panel of stable-lot bars dwelt on her trembling lips and she smiled contentedly over simple things.  Finally, she told them that she was sleepy and would talk no longer, because tomorrow morning she must be up early and give the house a thorough cleaning.  With that announcement she turned her seamed face to the wall and slept.  It was a placid sleep which no clamor of an alarm clock would ever disturb.