"My dear lady, you know practically all there is to know," he made answer. "Bunny is going to be one of my proudest successes. But there's just one thing to be arranged, I want to have him under my own eye for a time. It's for his own good, so I know your consent is a foregone conclusion. No, not yet of course. I will give him a month here, and then I want to fetch him up to London and keep him in a Home there belonging to my colleague Sir Kersley Whitton until I am able to discharge him as cured. Will you agree to that?"
His eyes, shrewd and kindly, looked down into hers. His hand still held her wrist. She felt the magic of his personality, and found it hard to resist.
But, "To take him away from me!" she said rather piteously. "Must you take him away?"
Jake had withdrawn a little as if he did not wish to take part in the conversation. Capper sat down beside her.
"Mrs. Bolton," he said, "I guess that young brother of yours is just one of the biggest factors of your existence. Isn't that so? You'd do anything for him, and never count the cost. Well, here's something you can do for him, a mighty big thing too. It'll be a very critical time, and I want to have him under my own eye. I also want to have complete control of him. I'm not hinting that your influence isn't good. I know it is. But, for all that, he'll do better with comparative strangers during that critical time than he would with his own people. I want to lift him entirely out of the old ruts. I want to start him on an entirely new footing, to give him self-reliance, to get him into good, wholesome habits. It'll make all the difference in the world to him or I shouldn't be urging it so strongly. Say, now, you promised me your co-operation, you are not going to refuse?"
She could not refuse. She realized it with a leaden heart. Yet she made one quivering attempt to pierce through the ever-narrowing circle.
"But the cost," she said.
"It won't cost you a single cent," said Capper. "It's just for my private satisfaction that it will be done."
Her last hope faded. She made a little gesture of helplessness. "He is in your hands, Doctor," she said. "I--I am much more grateful to you than I seem."
Capper's hand pressed hers. "You will never regret this sacrifice as long as you live," he said, looking at her with his keen, kindly eyes. "I'm even ready to prophesy that you'll one day reap a very considerable benefit from it."