“He’s old, and I intend to be careful.  But he doesn’t own me, body and soul.  And it may be hard to make him understand that.”

Many times in the next few months Mademoiselle was to remember that conversation, and turn it over in her shrewd, troubled mind.  Was there anything she could have done, outside of warning old Anthony himself?  Suppose she had gone to Mr. Howard Cardew?

“And how,” said Mademoiselle, trying to smile, “do you propose to assert this new independence of spirit?”

“I am going to see Aunt Elinor,” observed Lily.  “There, that’s eleven buttons on, and I feel I’ve earned my dinner.  And I’m going to ask Willy Cameron to come here to see me.  To dinner.  And as he is sure not to have any evening clothes, for one night in their lives the Cardew men are going to dine in mufti.  Which is military, you dear old thing, for the everyday clothing that the plain people eat in, without apparent suffering!”

Mademoiselle got up.  She felt that Grace should be warned at once.  And there was a look in Lily’s face when she mentioned this Cameron creature that made Mademoiselle nervous.

“I thought he lived in the country.”

“Then prepare yourself for a blow,” said Lily Cardew, cheerfully.  “He is here in the city, earning twenty-five dollars a week in the Eagle Pharmacy, and serving the plain people perfectly preposterous patent potions—­which is his own alliteration, and pretty good, I say.”

Mademoiselle went out into the hall.  Over the house, always silent, there had come a death-like hush.  In the lower hall the footman was hanging up his master’s hat and overcoat.  Anthony Cardew had come home for dinner.

CHAPTER V

Mr. William Wallace Cameron, that evening of Lily’s return, took a walk.  From his boarding house near the Eagle Pharmacy to the Cardew residence was a half-hour’s walk.  There were a number of things he had meant to do that evening, with a view to improving his mind, but instead he took a walk.  He had made up a schedule for those evenings when he was off duty, thinking it out very carefully on the train to the city.  And the schedule ran something like this: 

Monday:  8-11.  Read History. 
Wednesday:  8-11.  Read Politics and Economics. 
Friday:  8-9:30.  Travel. 9:30-11.  French. 
Sunday:  Hear various prominent divines.

He had cut down on the travel rather severely, because travel was with him an indulgence rather than a study.  The longest journey he had ever taken in his life was to Washington.  That was early in the war, when it did not seem possible that his country would not use him, a boy who could tramp incredible miles in spite of his lameness and who could shoot a frightened rabbit at almost any distance, by allowing for a slight deflection to the right in the barrel of his old rifle.