Grace made a little gesture of despair.

“I don’t know.  She wanted to come home.  She begged—­it was dreadful.”  Grace hesitated.  “Even that couldn’t be as bad as this, father,” she said.  “We have all lived our own lives, you and Howard and myself, and now we won’t let her do it.”

“And a pretty mess we have made of them!” His tone was grim.  “No, I can’t say that we offer her any felicitous examples.  But the fellow’s plan is transparent enough.  He is ambitious.  He sees himself installed here, one of us.  Mark my words, Grace, he may love the child, but his real actuating motive is that.  He’s a Radical, because since he can’t climb up, he’ll pull down.  But once let him get his foot on the Cardew ladder, and he’ll climb, over her, over all of us.”

He sat after that, his head dropped on his chest, his hands resting on the arms of his chair, in a brooding reverie.  Grace waited.

“Better bring her home,” he said finally.  “Tell her I surrender.  I want her here.  Let her bring that fellow here, too, if she has to see him.  But for God’s sake, Grace,” he added, with a flash of his old fire, “show her some real men, too.”

Suddenly Grace bent over and kissed him.  He put up his hand, and patted her on the shoulder.

“A good woman, Grace,” he said, “and a good daughter to me.  I’m sorry.  I’ll try to do better.”

As Grace straightened she heard the door close below, and Howard’s voice.  Almost immediately she heard him coming up the staircase, and going out into the hall she called softly to him.

“Where are you?” he asked, looking up.  “Is father there?”

“Yes.”

“I want you both to come down to the library, Grace.”

She heard him turn and go slowly down the stairs.  His voice had been strained and unnatural.  As she turned she found Anthony behind her.

“Something has happened!”

“I rather think so,” said old Anthony, slowly.

They went together down the stairs.

In the library Lily was standing, facing the door, a quiet figure, listening and waiting.  Howard had dropped into a chair and was staring ahead.  And beyond the circle of lights was a shadowy figure, vaguely familiar, tall, thin, and watchful.  Willy Cameron.

CHAPTER XXXI

The discovery that Lily had left his house threw Jim Doyle into a frenzy.  The very manner of her going filled him with dark suspicion.  Either she had heard more that morning than he had thought, or—­In his cunning mind for weeks there had been growing a smoldering suspicion of his wife.  She was too quiet, too acquiescent.  In the beginning, when Woslosky had brought the scheme to him, and had promised it financial support from Europe, he had taken a cruel and savage delight in outlining it to her, in seeing her cringe and go pale.

He had not feared her then.  She had borne with so much, endured, tolerated, accepted, that he had not realized that she might have a breaking point.