V
"Finally"—perhaps I have used the word too soon.
I dropped in on Raymond, one evening, at his private hotel. It was about four months after Albert's departure for the West. His quarters seemed as snugly comfortable as ever, and as completely adapted to his ultimately discovered personality and its peculiar requirements. Raymond master of a big house! Raymond leading a public life!
But he himself was perturbed. It was a letter from Albert—it was two or three letters, in fact.
"He says he is going to marry her."
"Her?"
Albert, in the West, had done well. He had taken hold immediately, decisively. The initiative which would never have developed under his father had been liberated during his war service and was now mounting to a still higher pitch among the mountains.