And now she knew it must go, as well as that, sooner or later, Death itself must come.
She knew Richard Travis, and she knew that, if from his life were snatched the chance of making Alice Westmore his wife he would sell the place as cold-bloodedly as Shipton would.
Travis sat smoking, but reading her. He spelled her thoughts as easily as if they had been written on her forehead, for he was a man who spelled. He smoked calmly and indifferently, but the one question of his heart—the winning of Alice,—surged in his breast and it said: “Now is the time—now—buy her—the mother. This is the one thing which is her price.”
He looked at Mrs. Westmore again. He scanned her closely, from her foot to the dainty head of beautiful, half-grey hair. He could read her as an open book—her veneration of all Westmoreland things—her vanity—her pride of home and name and position; the overpowering independence of that vanity which made her hold up her head in company, just as in the former days, tho' to do it she must work, scrub, pinch, ay, even go hungry.
He knew it all and he knew it better than she guessed—that it had actually come to a question of food with them; that her son was a geological dreamer, just out of college, and that Alice's meagre salary at the run-down female college where she taught music was all that stood between them and poverty of the bitterest kind.
For there is no poverty like the tyranny of that which sits on the erstwhile throne of plenty.
He glanced around the room—the hall—the home—in his mind's eye—and wondered how she did it—how she managed that poverty should leave no trace of itself in the home, the well furnished and elegant old home, from its shining, polished furniture and old silver to the oiled floor of oak and ash.
Could he buy her—bribe her, win her to work for him? He started to speak and say: “Cousin Alethea, may not all this be stopped, this debt and poverty and make-believe—this suffering of pride, transfixed by the spears of poverty? Let you and me arrange it, and all so satisfactorily. I have loved Alice all my life.”
There is the fool in every one of us. And that is what the fool in Richard Travis wished him to say. What he did say was:
“Oh, it was nothing but purely business on my part—purely business. I had the money and was looking for a good investment. I was glad to find it. There are a hundred acres and the house left. And by the way, Cousin Alethea, I just added five-hundred dollars more to the principal,—thought, perhaps, you'd need it, you know? You'll find it to your credit at Shipton's bank.”