“Murad,” and Mrs. Ault spoke as if she were not thinking of the change for herself, “there is one thing I wish you would do for me, dear.”

“What is that?”

“Go to Mr. Mavick, or to Mrs. Mavick, or the assignees or whoever, and have the daughter—­yes, and her mother—­free to take away anything they want, anything dear to them by long association.  Will you?”

“I don’t see how.  Mavick wouldn’t do it for us, and I guess he is too proud to accept anything from me.  I don’t owe him anything.  And then the property is in the assignment.  Whatever is there I bought with the house.”

“I should be so much happier if you could do something about it.”

“Well, it don’t matter much.  I guess the assignees can make Mrs. Mavick believe easy enough that certain things belong to her.  But I would not do it for any other living being but you.”

“By-the-way,” he added, “there is another bit of property that I didn’t take, the Newport palace.”

“I should have dreaded that more than the other.”

“So I thought.  And I have another plan.  It’s long been in my mind, and we will carry it out next summer.  There is a little plateau on the side of the East Mountain in Rivervale, where there used to stand a shack of a cabin, with a wild sort of garden-patch about it, a tumble-down root fence, all in the midst of brush and briers.  Lord, what a habitation it was!  But such a view—­rivers, mountains, meadows, and orchards in the distance!  That is where I lived with my mother.  What a life!  I hated everything, everybody but her.”

Mr. Ault paused, his strong, dark face working with passion, as the memory of his outlawed boyhood revived.  Is it possible that this pirate of the Street had a bit of sentiment at the bottom of his heart?  After a moment he continued: 

“That was the spot to which my mother took me when I was knee-high.  I’ve bought it, bought the whole hillside.  Next summer we will put up a house there, not a very big house, just a long, low sort of a Moorish pavilion, the architect calls it.  I wish she could see it.”

Mrs. Ault rose, with tears in her gentle eyes, stood by her husband’s chair a moment, ran her fingers through his heavy black locks, bent down and kissed him, and went away without a word.

There was another bit of property that was not included in the wreck.  It belonged to Mrs. Mavick.  This was a little house in Irving Place, in which Carmen Eschelle lived with her mother, in the days before the death of Henderson’s first wife, not very happy days for that wife.  Carmen had a fancy for keeping it after her marriage.  Not from any sentiment, she told Mr. Mavick on the occasion of her second marriage, oh, no, but somehow it seemed to her, in all her vast possessions left to her by Henderson, the only real estate she had.  It was the only thing that had not passed into the absolute possession and control of Mavick.  The great town house, with all the rest, stood in Mavick’s name.  What secret influence had he over her that made her submit to such a foolish surrender?