She had reached her chair, but she had not had time to reseat herself when she beheld him approaching with the bundle of loose sheets clutched in his hand.

“I want you to sit here and read,” said he, laying the manuscript down on a small table near the wall under a gas-jet which he immediately lighted.  “I am going back to my own desk.  If you want to speak, you may; I shall not be working.”  And she heard his footsteps retreating again in and out among the furniture till he reached his own chair and sat before his own table.

This ended all sound in the room excepting the beating of her own heart, which had become tumultuous.

How could she sit there and read words, with the blood pounding in her veins and her eyes half blind with terror and excitement?  It was only the necessity of the case which made it possible.  She knew that she would never be released from that spot until she had read what had been placed before her.  Thank God! the manuscript was legible.  Oliver’s handwriting possessed the clearness of print.  She had begun to read before she knew it, and having begun, she never paused till she reached the end.

I was fifteen.  It was my birthday and I had my own ideas of how I wanted to spend it.  My hobby was modelling.  My father had no sympathy with this hobby.  To him it was a waste of time better spent in study or such sports as would fit me for study.  But he had never absolutely forbidden me to exercise my talent this way, and when on the day I mention I had a few hours of freedom, I decided to begin a piece of work of which I had long dreamed.  This was the remodelling in clay of an exquisite statue which had greatly aroused my admiration.

This statue stood in a forbidden place.  It was one of the art treasures of the great house on the bluff commonly called Spencer’s Folly.  I had seen this marble once, when dining there with father, and was so impressed by its beauty, that it haunted me night and day, standing out white and wonderful in my imagination, against backgrounds of endless variation.  To copy its lovely lines, to caress with a creative hand those curves of beauty instinct, as I then felt, with soul, became my one overmastering desire,—­a desire which soon deepened into purpose.  The boy of fifteen would attempt the impossible.  I procured my clay and then awaited my opportunity.  It came, as I have said, on my birthday.

There was no one living in the house at this time.  Mr. Spencer had gone West for the winter.  The servants had been dismissed, and the place closed.  Only that morning I had heard one of his boon companions say, “Oh, Jack’s done for.  He’s found a pretty widow in the Sierras, and there’s no knowing now when we’ll drink his health again in Spencer’s Folly:”  a statement which wakened but one picture in my mind and that was a long stretch of empty rooms teeming with art treasures amid which one gem rose supreme—­the gem which through his reckless carelessness, I now proposed to make my own, if loving fingers and the responsive clay would allow it.