“I can sell the college site and buildings to this new manufactory coming here in August. Added to this, I have acquired sufficient funds of my own to pay you the entire amount and a good rate of interest with it. My grief is that for all these years, I have kept you out of your own.”
Elinor rose up, white and cold, and put her hand on her uncle's hand.
“Let me think a little, Uncle Lloyd. It is not easy to realize one's fortune in a minute.” Then she left him.
“It makes little difference what passion possesses a man's soul, if it possesses him he will wrong his fellowmen,” Fenneben said to himself. “In Joshua Wream's craving to endow college claims he robbed this girl of her inheritance and sent her to me, telling me she was shallow-minded and wholly given to a love of luxuries, that I might not see his plans; while Norrie, never knowing, has proved over and over how false these charges were. And at last, to still his noisy conscience, he would marry her, willing or unwilling, to Vincent Burgess. But with all this, his last hours were full of sorrowful confession. What do these Masters' Degrees my brother bore avail a man if he have not the mastery within? Meanwhile, my labors here must end.”
Lonely and crushed, with his life work taken from him, he sat and faced the sunset. Presently, he saw Elinor and Victor Burleigh strolling away in the soft evening light. At the corner, Elinor turned and waved a good-by to him. Then the memory of his own commencement day came back to him, and of the happy night before. Oh, that night before! Can a man ever forget! And now, tonight!
“Don Fonnybone,” Bug Buler piped, as he came trudging around the corner. “I want to confessing.”
He came to Fenneben's side and looked up confidently in his face.
“Well, confessing. I've just finished doing that myself,” Fenneben said.
“I did a bad, long ago. I want to go and confessing. Will you go with me?”
“Where shall we go to be shriven, Bug?