“Elinor, I'm not hunting a crowd tonight,” Vic said in a low voice.
“Well, come, anyway, and we'll hunt the solitude, if we can't hunt any other game.” And they strolled homeward together.
In the early evening Lloyd Fenneben and Elinor sat on the veranda watching the sunset through the trees beyond the river.
“You are to graduate from Sunrise tomorrow,” Dr. Fenneben was saying. “For a Wream that is the real beginning of life. I have your business matters entrusted to me, ready to close up as soon as you are 'legally graduated' according to my brother's wishes, but you may as well know them now.”
He paused, and Elinor, thinking of the moonlight, maybe, waited in peaceful silence.
“Norrie, when I finished at the university my brother put a small fortune into my hands and bade me go West and build a new Harvard. You know our family hold that that is the only legitimate use for money.”
Norrie smiled assent.
“I did not ask whose money it was, for my brother handled many bequests, and I was a poor business man then. I came and invested it at last in Sunrise-by-the-Walnut. That was your mother's money, given by your father to Joshua, who gave it to me. Joshua did not tell me, and I supposed some good, old Boston philanthropist had bought an indulgence for his ignorant soul by endowing this thing so freely. I found it out on Joshua's deathbed, and only to pacify him would I consent to keep it until now. Henceforth, it must be yours. That is why I asked you a year ago to just be a college girl and drop all thought about marrying. I wanted you to come into possession of your own property before you bound yourself by any bonds you could not break.”
Elinor sat silent for a while, her dark eyes seeing only the low golden sunset. She understood now what had grooved that line of care in Lloyd Fenneben's face when he came home from the East. But he had conquered, aye, he had won the mastery.
“And you and Sunrise?” she asked at length.