V

“I don’t say it wasn’t straight, yet don’t say it was straight.  It was business.”

Mary, at the words, lifted her head with a start, and looked intently at the speaker.

When, half an hour before, a card with “Mr. Parvis” on it had been brought up to her, she had been immediately aware that the name had been a part of her consciousness ever since she had read it at the head of Boyne’s unfinished letter.  In the library she had found awaiting her a small neutral-tinted man with a bald head and gold eye-glasses, and it sent a strange tremor through her to know that this was the person to whom her husband’s last known thought had been directed.

Parvis, civilly, but without vain preamble,—­in the manner of a man who has his watch in his hand,—­had set forth the object of his visit.  He had “run over” to England on business, and finding himself in the neighborhood of Dorchester, had not wished to leave it without paying his respects to Mrs. Boyne; without asking her, if the occasion offered, what she meant to do about Bob Elwell’s family.

The words touched the spring of some obscure dread in Mary’s bosom.  Did her visitor, after all, know what Boyne had meant by his unfinished phrase?  She asked for an elucidation of his question, and noticed at once that he seemed surprised at her continued ignorance of the subject.  Was it possible that she really knew as little as she said?

“I know nothing—­you must tell me,” she faltered out; and her visitor thereupon proceeded to unfold his story.  It threw, even to her confused perceptions, and imperfectly initiated vision, a lurid glare on the whole hazy episode of the Blue Star Mine.  Her husband had made his money in that brilliant speculation at the cost of “getting ahead” of some one less alert to seize the chance; the victim of his ingenuity was young Robert Elwell, who had “put him on” to the Blue Star scheme.

Parvis, at Mary’s first startled cry, had thrown her a sobering glance through his impartial glasses.

“Bob Elwell wasn’t smart enough, that’s all; if he had been, he might have turned round and served Boyne the same way.  It’s the kind of thing that happens every day in business.  I guess it’s what the scientists call the survival of the fittest,” said Mr. Parvis, evidently pleased with the aptness of his analogy.

Mary felt a physical shrinking from the next question she tried to frame; it was as though the words on her lips had a taste that nauseated her.

“But then—­you accuse my husband of doing something dishonorable?”

Mr. Parvis surveyed the question dispassionately.  “Oh, no, I don’t.  I don’t even say it wasn’t straight.”  He glanced up and down the long lines of books, as if one of them might have supplied him with the definition he sought.  “I don’t say it wasn’t straight, and yet I don’t say it was straight.  It was business.”  After all, no definition in his category could be more comprehensive than that.