“Do you want to run right into the smallpox at Montreal?”

“Oh, I don’t mind.  I never take anything of that sort.”

“But don’t you see that it isn’t safe for the Lamonts and Mrs. Farquhar to go there?”

“I suppose not; I never thought of that.  You have dragged me all over the continent, and I didn’t suppose there was any way of escaping the rapids.  But what is the row now?  Has Irene telegraphed you that she has got over her chill?”

“Read that letter.”

Forbes took the sheet and read: 

“New York, September 2, 1885.

“My dear Stanhope,—­We came back to town yesterday, and I find a considerable arrears of business demanding my attention.  A suit has been brought against the Lavalle Iron Company, of which I have been the attorney for some years, for the possession of an important part of its territory, and I must send somebody to Georgia before the end of this month to look up witnesses and get ready for the defense.  If you are through your junketing by that time, it will be an admirable opportunity for you to learn the practical details of the business . . . .  Perhaps it may quicken your ardor in the matter if I communicate to you another fact.  Penelope wrote me from Richfield, in a sort of panic, that she feared you had compromised your whole future by a rash engagement with a young lady from Cyrusville, Ohio—­a Miss Benson-and she asked me to use my influence with you.  I replied to her that I thought that, in the language of the street, you had compromised your future, if that were true, for about a hundred cents on the dollar.  I have had business relations with Mr. Benson for twenty years.  He is the principal owner in the Lavalle Iron Mine, and he is one of the most sensible, sound, and upright men of my acquaintance.  He comes of a good old New England stock, and if his daughter has the qualities of her father and I hear that she has been exceedingly well educated besides she is not a bad match even for a Knickerbocker.

“Hoping that you will be able to report at the office before the end of the month,

“I am affectionately yours,
“Schuyler Brevoort.”

“Well, that’s all right,” said the artist, after a pause.  “I suppose the world might go on if you spend another night in this hotel.  But if you must go, I’ll bring on the women and the baggage when navigation opens in the morning.”

XVI

WHITE MOUNTAINS, LENNOX

The White Mountains are as high as ever, as fine in sharp outline against the sky, as savage, as tawny; no other mountains in the world of their height so well keep, on acquaintance, the respect of mankind.  There is a quality of refinement in their granite robustness; their desolate, bare heights and sky-scraping ridges are rosy in the dawn and violet at sunset, and their profound green gulfs are still mysterious.  Powerful as man is, and pushing, he cannot wholly vulgarize them.  He can reduce the valleys and the show “freaks” of nature to his own moral level, but the vast bulks and the summits remain for the most part haughty and pure.