Over in the Saxon House on this same evening Vincent Burgess had come in to see Dennie about some books.
“I took your advice, Dennie,” he said. “I have been a man to the extent of making myself square with Victor Burleigh, and I've felt like a free man ever since.”
The look of joy and pride in Dennie's eyes thrilled him with a keen pleasure. Her eyes were of such a soft gray and her pretty wavy hair was so lustrous tonight.
“Dennie, I am going to be even more of a man than you asked me to be.”
Dennie did not look up. The pink of her cheek, her long lashes over her downcast eyes, the sunny curls above her forehead, all were fair to Vincent Burgess. As he looked at her he began to understand, blind bat that he had been all this time, he, Professor Vincent Burgess, A.B., Instructor in Greek from Harvard University.
“I must be going now. Good-night, Dennie.”
He shook hands and hurried away, but to the girl who was earning her college education there was something in his handclasp, denied before.
The next day there was a settling of affairs at Sunrise, and the character-building put into Lloyd Fenneben's hand, as clay for the potter's wheel, seemed to him to be shaping somewhat to its destined uses.
Again, Vincent Burgess sat in the chair by the west study window, acting-dean, now seeking neither types, nor geographical breadth, nor seclusion amid barren prairie lands for profound research in preparing for a Master's Degree.
With no effort to conceal matters, except the fact that the trust funds had first belonged to his own sister and brother-in-law, he explained to Fenneben the line of events connecting him with Victor Burleigh.