“I really want to talk to you seriously, Bob,” she said, and her voice was serious.  “I like you very much—­I always have—­and I want you to listen seriously.  All of us have friends.  Some people—­you, for instance—­have a great many.  We have but one father.”  Her voice failed a little at the word.  “No friend can ever be the same to you as your father, and no friendship can make up what his displeasure will cost you.  I do not mean to say that I shan’t always be your friend, for I shall be.”

Young men seldom arrive at maturity by gradual steps—­something sets them thinking, a week passes, and suddenly the world has a different aspect.  Bob had thought much of his father during that week, and had considered their relationship very carefully.  He had a few precious memories of his mother before she had been laid to rest under that hideous and pretentious monument in the Brampton hill cemetery.  How unlike her was that monument!  Even as a young boy, when on occasions he had wandered into the cemetery, he used to stand before it with a lump in his throat and bitter resentment in his heart, and once he had shaken his fist at it.  He had grown up out of sympathy with his father, but he had never until now began to analyze the reasons for it.  His father had given him everything except that communion of which Cynthia spoke so feelingly.  Mr. Worthington had acted according to his lights:  of all the people in the world he thought first of his son.  But his thoughts and care had been alone of what the son would be to the world:  how that son would carry on the wealth and greatness of Isaac D. Worthington.

Bob had known this before, but it had had no such significance for him then as now.  He was by no means lacking in shrewdness, and as he had grown older he had perceived clearly enough Mr. Worthington’s reasons for throwing him socially with the Duncans.  Mr. Worthington had never been a plain-spoken man, but he had as much as told his son that it was decreed that he should marry the heiress of the state.  There were other plans connected with this.  Mr. Worthington meant that his son should eventually own the state itself, for he saw that the man who controlled the highways of a state could snap his fingers at governor and council and legislature and judiciary:  could, indeed, do more—­could own them even more completely than Jethro Bass now owned them, and without effort.  The dividends would do the work:  would canvass the counties and persuade this man and that with sufficient eloquence.  By such tokens it will be seen that Isaac D. Worthington is destined to become great, though the greatness will be akin to that possessed by those gentlemen who in past ages had built castles across the highway between Venice and the North Sea.  All this was in store for Bob Worthington, if he could only be brought to see it.  These things would be given him, if he would but confine his worship to the god of wealth.