“Bully for the old boy!” I muttered finally, folding the copy with something akin to reverence for my grandfather’s shrewdness in closing so many doors upon his heirs. paragraph. If I could not secure his estate by settling at Glenarm for a year I was not to gain it by marrying the alternative heir. Here, clearly, was not one of those situations so often contrived by novelists, in which the luckless heir presumptive, cut off without a cent, weds the pretty cousin who gets the fortune and they live happily together ever afterward. John Marshall Glenarm had explicitly provided against any such frustration required no lawyer to interpret this of his plans.

“Bully for you, John Marshall Glenarm!” I rose and bowed low to his photograph.

On top of my mail next morning lay a small envelope, unstamped, and addressed to me in a free running hand.

“Ferguson left it,” explained Bates.

I opened and read:

If convenient will Mr. Glenarm kindly look in at St. Agatha’s some day this week at four o’clock. Sister The resa wishes to see him.

I whistled softly. My feelings toward Sister Theresa had been those of utter repugnance and antagonism. I had been avoiding her studiously and was not a little surprised that she should seek an interview with me. Quite possibly she wished to inquire how soon I expected to abandon Glenarm House; or perhaps she wished to admonish me as to the perils of my soul. In any event I liked the quality of her note, and I was curious to know why she sent for me; moreover, Marian Devereux was her niece and that was wholly in the Sister’s favor.

At four o’clock I passed into St. Agatha territory and rang the bell at the door of the building where I had left Olivia the evening I found her in the chapel. A Sister admitted me, led the way to a small reception-room where, I imagined, the visiting parent was received, and left me. I felt a good deal like a schoolboy who has been summoned before a severe master for discipline. I was idly beating my hat with my gloves when a quick step sounded in the hall and instantly a brown-clad figure appeared in the doorway.

“Mr. Glenarm ?”

It was a deep, rich voice, a voice of assurance, a voice, may I say ? of the world,—a voice, too, may I add ? of a woman who is likely to say what she means without ado. The white band at her forehead brought into relief two wonderful gray eyes that were alight with kindliness. She surveyed me a moment, then her lips parted in a smile.

“This room is rather forbidding; if you will come with me—”