"After a week's visiting with his sister at Blue Cliffs, he will go up to Richmond and select a site for his office and purchase his law library, though I think he will have to go to Philadelphia to do that."
"Yes, I suppose he will," admitted Hartman.
"What are your own plans about yourself, Victor, if I may be allowed to ask?" inquired the minister.
"Well, I haven't any. I came on here to see my boy and girl, and settle them in life as well as I can. I shall stay till I do that anyway. After that I don't know what I shall do. I do not care about going back to California. My business there is in the hands of a capable and trustworthy agent. And somehow I like the old mother State; and now that you lead me to think about it, perhaps I shall spend the rest of my life here; but, as I said before, I don't know."
"By the way, dear Victor, you spoke to me with much simple frankness of my most private personal affairs. May I take the same liberty with you?" inquired Mr. Lyle, very seriously.
"Why, of course you may, if you call it a liberty, which I don't, you know!" answered Victor, with a smile.
"Then, my dear Hartman, how about Miss Electra? I was not so absorbed in my own interests as not to have an eye to yours."
"Ah, Miss Electra! Well, parson, she was my little old acquaintance of Rat Alley, when I flourished in that fragrant neighborhood as Galley Vick."
"No!" exclaimed Mr. Lyle, opening his eyes wide with astonishment.
"Yes," quietly answered Victor Hartman. "And it is a wonder that you, who know the family so well, do not know this episode in its history."