But upon reflection, in her own room, the matter seemed less and less all right, and finally, after a long and not very helpful consultation with her sister, Kate suddenly thought of Reuben Tracy. A second later she had fully decided to ask his advice, and swift upon this rose the resolve to summon him immediately.
Thus it was that the perfumed note came to be sent.
Reuben took the seat in the drawing-room of the Minsters indicated by the servant who had admitted him, and it did not occur to this member of the firm of Tracy & Boyce to walk about and look at the pictures, much less to wonder how many of them were of young men.
Even in this dull light he could recognize, on the opposite wall, a boyhood portrait of the Stephen Minster, Junior, whose early death had dashed so many hopes, and pointed so many morals to the profit of godly villagers. He thought about this worthless, brief career, as his eyes rested on the bright, boyish face of the portrait, with the clear dark eyes and the fresh-tinted cheeks, and his serious mind filled itself with protests against the conditions which had made of this heir to millions a rake and a fool. There was no visible reason why Stephen Minster’s son should not have been clever and strong, a fit master of the great part created for him by his father. There must be some blight, some mysterious curse upon hereditary riches here in America, thought Reuben, for all at once he found himself persuaded that this was the rule with most rich men’s sons. Therein lay a terrible menace to the Republic, he said to himself. Vague musings upon the possibility of remedying this were beginning to float in his brain—the man could never contemplate injustices, great or small, without longing to set them right—when the door opened and the tall young elder daughter of the Minsters entered.
Reuben rose and felt himself making some such obeisance before her in spirit as one lays at the feet of a queen. What he did in reality or what he said, left no record on his memory.
He had been seated again for some minutes, and had listened with the professional side of his mind to most of what story she had to tell, before he regained control of his perceptions and began to realize that the most beautiful woman he had ever seen was confiding to him her anxieties, as a friend even more than as a lawyer. The situation was so wonderful that it needed all the control he had over his faculties to grasp and hold it. Always afterward he thought of the moment in which his confusion of mind vanished, and he, sitting on the sofa facing her chair, was able to lean back a little and talk as if he had known her a long time, as the turning-point in his whole life.
What it was in her power to tell him about the transaction which had frightened her did not convey a very clear idea to his mind. A mortgage of four hundred thousand dollars had been placed upon the Minsters’ property to meet the alleged necessities of a company in which they were large owners, and their own furnaces had been put under the control of a big trust formed by other manufacturers, presumably for the benefit of all its members. This was what he made out of her story.
“On their face,” he said, “these things seem regular enough. The doubtful point, of course, would be whether, in both transactions, your interests and those of your family were perfectly safe-guarded. This is something I can form no opinion about. But Mr. Boyce must have looked out for that and seen that you got ‘value received.’”
“Ah, Mr. Boyce! That is just the question,” Kate answered, swiftly. “Has he looked out for it?”