"You mean Brother Francis, who was at The Towers? He has gone, I am sorry to say."
"Where has he gone?"
"Brother Francis has gone to the leper mission at Molokai."
Kimberly stared at the man: "Molokai! Francis gone to Molokai? What do you mean?"
A wave of amazement darkening Kimberly's features startled the red-haired brother. "Who sent him?" demanded Kimberly angrily. "Why was I not notified? What kind of management is this? Where is your Superior?"
"Brother Ambrose is ill. I, Mr. Kimberly, am Brother Edgar. No one sent Brother Francis. Surely you must know, for years he has wished to go to the Molokai Mission? When he was once more free he renewed his petition. The day after it was granted he left to catch the steamer. He went to The Towers to find you to say good-by. They told him you had gone to sea."
Kimberly rode slowly home. He was unwilling to admit even to himself how hateful what he had now heard was to him and how angrily and inexplicably he resented it.
He had purposed on the day that he made Alice his wife to give Brother Francis as a foundation for those higher schools that were the poor Italian's dream, a sum of money much larger than Francis had ever conceived of. It was to have been one of those gifts the Kimberlys delighted in--of royal munificence, without ceremony and without the slightest previous intimation; one of those overwhelming surprises that gratified the Kimberly pride.
Because it was to have been in ready money even the securities had previously been converted, and the tons of gold lay with those other useless tons that were to have been Alice's on the same day--in the bank vaults. And of the two who were to have been made happy by them, one lay in her grave and the other with his own hand had opened the door of his living tomb.
Kimberly in the weariness of living returned to the empty Towers. Dolly and her husband had gone home and Hamilton now returning to town was to dine with Charles Kimberly. Robert, welcoming isolation, went upstairs alone.