"She'd be obliged to take it if it came from a relative," suggested Mr. Towle; "couldn't you——"
The other shook his head. "Bless my soul, Towle," he murmured, with something very like a twinkle of humor in his eyes; "if I should attempt to settle a shilling piece on Jane there'd be the deuce and all to pay. I should think you'd know better than to suggest it."
"It's going to be done somehow, Robert," said Mr. Towle firmly, "if I—er—have to hang myself to bring it about. She couldn't refuse a legacy."
"Oh, I say; that would never do, Towle! You mustn't think of such a thing," protested Mr. Aubrey-Blythe, fidgeting in his chair. "But, speaking of a legacy, I wonder, now——"
He left his sentence suspended in midair, while he rummaged in his desk for a paper. "Hum—yes, yes. Now, I wonder— I—er—had a brother once, a younger brother, a sad rascal of a fellow, quite as improvident as poor Oliver—Jane's father, you know—and dissolute to boot. We don't often mention Foxhall Aubrey-Blythe, poor fellow; sad case, very. He's dead, in short. Died in South Africa a couple of months ago, without a sixpence to his name, as might have been expected. Now, I wonder— Of course, it would be very irregular and all that; but I fancy it could be arranged, with the help of a discreet attorney—eh? That is to say, if you won't think better of it, Towle."
"I should think it might be done," agreed the Hon. Wipplinger Towle seriously. "There can be no possible harm in it, certainly, to the dead man, or to anyone else. And it's got to be arranged, Robert. I'm quite set upon it."
After which the arch conspirators put their heads together over the details of a plot which, for the present at least, does not vitally concern the fortunes of Miss Jane Evelyn Aubrey-Blythe, who at that moment was industriously engaged in brushing the rugs, which she had carried out from Mrs. Belknap's little parlor to the untidy grass plot bristling with spent dandelion stalks, situated at the rear of the Belknap house.
Mary MacGrotty was clattering about the range inside the small kitchen, pausing to cast an occasional malevolent glance through the open window. Master Belknap was engaged in calmly propelling his tricycle up and down the sidewalk under the watchful eye of Mrs. Belknap, seated on the front porch with her sewing. It was an eminently peaceful domestic scene, which gave no sign of the volcanic possibilities lurking underneath the deceitful calm of its surface.
The seventh individual who was in process of being inextricably bound in the fast-spinning threads of a watchful Fate was Mr. John Everett, who sat in a certain Broadway office, ostensibly occupied with a very dry legal paper, whose intricacies he supposed himself to be diligently mastering. In reality this young gentleman was uncounted leagues away from the Broadway office, wandering in lands of faerie with Jane. Jane's eyes were bright and Jane's lips were red and tempting; Jane's little hands were clasped upon his arm as they two walked slowly (all in the land of faerie) across a velvet lawn, wherein neither plantain nor dandelion had ever encroached, toward a house—a little house, with balconies, perhaps, and dormer windows, certainly—Jack Everett couldn't be altogether sure of its outlines, since houses (in the land of faerie) have a way of changing while one looks, like dissolving lantern views. All of which was very much in the air and exceedingly foolish, as this worthy young man told himself sternly, when he found, at the expiration of half of a delightful hour, where he had really been spending his time.