“Well?” Peter prompted, as she hesitated.

“Well.  They had a written agreement then, giving Uncle Vincent a third interest in the patent, should it be sold or put on the market—­”

“Ha!” Peter ejaculated, struck.

“Which, of course, was only a little while before Uncle Vincent died,” Alix went on, with a grave nod.  “The agreement lay in Dad’s desk all these years—­fancy how easily he might have burned it many’s the time!  But he didn’t.  George Sewall says that Anne is right.”

“But wasn’t Anne third heiress anyway, under his will?  I know I’ve heard—­”

“Certainly she was.  But a third interest now, in a diminished estate that began at something less than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, is quite different from a third of it ten years ago, plus compound interest,” Alix said, bringing her clear brows together with a quizzical smile.  “They’ve broken the will.”

Peter, in the silence, whistled expressively.

“Gee—­rusalem!” he exclaimed.  “What does it come to?”

At this Alix looked very sober, gazed down at the fire, and shook her head.

“All he had!” she answered, briefly.

Peter was silent, looking at her in stupefaction.

“Almost, that is,” Alix amended more cheerfully.  “As it was—­we should have had more than thirty thousand apiece.  As it is, Anne gets it all, or if not quite all, nearly all.”

“Gets!” he echoed, hotly.  “How do you mean?”

“It seems to be perfectly just,” the girl answered, rather lifelessly.  But immediately she laughed.  “Don’t look so awful, Peter.  In the first place, Cherry and I still have the house.  In the second place, I am singing at St. Raphael’s for five hundred a year, and singing other places now and then.”

“Alix, aren’t you corking!” he said, with his pleasantest smile.

“Am I?” she asked, smiling.  But immediately the smile melted, and her lips shook.  “Anyway, I’m glad you’re home again, Peter!” she added.

“Home again,” he answered, half-angrily.  “I should hope I am—­and high time, too!  Has this—­this money been turned over to Anne?”

“Not yet.  Nobody gets anything until the estate is cleared—­a year or more from now.”

“And do you tell me that she will have the effrontery to take it?”

“Rather!  She said to me, ’Isn’t it wonderful that Justin saw it at once, and I never would have seen it!’ She was quite sweet and merry over it—­”

“Great Lord!  Does she know that it’s practically all your father had?”

Alix hesitated.

“Well, you see there had been mismanagement, Peter.  Dad speculated, and lost some.  And we were a pretty heavy expense for a good many years.  I hated to expose the whole thing, and George—­ he’s been splendid—­said that they probably had a perfectly valid claim, anyway.  There are some things to be thankful for,” Alix added, dashing the sudden tears from her eyes, “and one is that Dad never knew it!”