Jacob's face expressed nothing; neither curiosity nor comprehension disfigured its supreme passiveness. His indifference gave Vance time to collect himself. He burst into a laugh. "Dead or alive—" the phrase was so like her! "Oh, I'm alive enough. And I'll come along with you if she says so." In his heart he knew Miss Spear was right: it was his business to see her again, to explain, to excuse himself. He had failed her shamefully … he hadn't done the job she had entrusted him with … he had left the books in disorder. "All right—I'll go," he repeated. He knew there was a train for New York later in the evening. "Anyhow," he thought, "I'm done with the Tracys… ."

Chapter 2

The door of the house stood wide. The afternoon radiance gilded the emerald veil of willows, shot back in fire from the unshuttered windows, rifled the last syringas of their inmost fragrance. Vance, even through his perturbation, felt again the spell of the old house. That door had first admitted him into the illimitable windings of the Past; and as he approached the magic threshold compunction and anger vanished.

"Oh, Vance!" he heard Miss Spear exclaim. He caught in her rich voice a mingling of reproach and apology—yes, apology. She was atoning already—for what?—but she was also challenging. "I knew you'd come." She put her hand on his arm with her light coercive touch. "Our cousin Mr. Tom Lorburn is here—he arrived unexpectedly on Sunday to see the Willows. It's years and years since he's been here… ."

"A surprise visit," came a voice, an old cracked fluty voice, querulous and distinguished, from the drawing room. "And I was surprised… . But perhaps you'll bring the young man in here, Halo… . Whatever you have to say to him may as well be said in my presence, since I am here … "

The little tirade ended almost in a wail, as the speaker, drooping in the doorway, looked down on Vance from the vantage of his narrow shoulders and lean brown throat. Vance looked up, returning the gaze. He had hardly ever seen anyone as tall as Mr. Lorburn, and no one, ever, as plaintively and unhappily handsome. A chronic distress was written on the narrow beautiful face condescending to his, with its perfectly arched nose, and the sensitive lips under a carefully trimmed white moustache; and the distress was repeated in the droop of Mr. Lorburn's shoulders under their easily fitting homespun, in the hollowing of his chest, and the clutch of his long expressive brown hand (so like Mrs. Spear's) on the bamboo stick which supported him.

"Since unhappily I am here," Mr. Lorburn repeated.

Miss Spear met this with a little laugh. "Oh, Cousin Tom—why unhappily? After all, since you've come, it was just as well you should arrive when we were all napping."

Mr. Lorburn bent his grieved eyes upon her. "Just as well?"

"That you should know the worst."