Raymond's face fell. "You don't mean that he—on top of everything else—has come forward to—?"
"My friend! my friend! It isn't that at all. 'He' has nothing to do with it. Quite another party."
And it was. A Mr. Gluckstein, a sort of impresario made suddenly rich by a few seasons with fiddlers and prima donnas, was the man. He was willing, he said,—and I paid the news out as evenly and considerately as I could,—he was willing to take the house and assume the mortgage—but he asked a bonus of five thousand dollars for doing it.
"The scoundrel!" groaned Raymond, his face twisted by contemptuous rage. "The impudent scoundrel!"
"Possibly so. But that is his offer—and the only one. And it is his best."
Raymond sat with his eyes on the floor. He was afraid to let me see his face. He hated the house—it was an incubus, a millstone; but—
He visibly despaired. "What shall I do about Albert's college, now?" he muttered presently.
He seemed to have passed at a bound beyond the stage of sale and transfer. The odious property was off his hands—and every hope of a spare dollar had gone with it.
"His mother writes—" began Raymond.
"Yes?"