She lowered her eyes for an instant. "I think I understand, Braden," she said, looking up to meet his gaze unwaveringly. Her voice was low, even husky. She saw finality in his eyes.
"He seemed to feel that I ought to know of the clause I mention," explained Braden dully. "Perhaps he thought it would—it might be an inducement to me to—to go ahead. God! What a thought!"
"He allowed you to read it?"
"A copy, last night. The real instrument was produced to-day by Judge Hollenback at my request, and the change was made in the presence of witnesses."
"Where is it now?"
"Judge Hollenback took it away with him. That's all I know about it."
"I am sorry," she said, a queer glint in her eyes. "Sorry he took it away with him, I mean. There is nothing I can do—now."
She sent for her mother that night. The next morning Simmy Dodge came down with George Tresslyn, who steadfastly refused to enter the house but rode to the hospital with his mother and sister in Simmy's automobile. Anne did not see Braden again after that momentous interview in the library. He had effaced himself.
Now she sat in the window looking down into the street, dull and listless and filled with the dread of the future that had once looked so engaging to her. The picture that avarice and greed had painted was gone. In its place was an honest bit of colour on the canvas,—a drab colour and noteless.
Mrs. Tresslyn, unmoved and apparently disinterested, ran idly through the pages of an illustrated periodical. Her furs lay across a chair in the corner of the room. They were of chinchilla and expressed a certain arrogance that could not be detached by space from the stately figure with the lorgnon. The year had done little toward bending that proud head. The cold, classic beauty of this youngish mother of the other occupants of the room was as yet absolutely unmarred by the worries that come with disillusionment. If she felt rebellious scorn for the tall disappointment who still bore and always would bear the honoured name of Tresslyn she gave no sign: if the slightest resentment existed in her soul toward the daughter who was no longer as wax in her hands, she hid the fact securely behind a splendid mask of unconcern. As for the old man upstairs she had but a single thought: an insistent one it was, however, and based itself upon her own dread of the thing that was killing him.