“I had assumed it would not be,” replied Colonel Craighill smiling. “It is a part of the assets!”
“Certainly, the Wayne-Craighill Company! As I am both a Wayne and a Craighill I prefer to stay in; I assume you don’t care one way or another.”
“On the other hand, I am glad to see that you have a mind of your own in the matter, and your feeling about your grandfather, the founder of the house, does you great credit, my son. It pleases me more than I can say. I should not be retiring myself if this were not in line with my plans of several years for concentrating my interests. I can use this money to better advantage elsewhere.”
He did not explain how he proposed to re-invest the money derived from the sale of the jobbing business, and Wayne asked no questions. A number of men were waiting, as usual, to see Colonel Craighill, who presently took up several cards from his desk and rang for the office boy to begin admitting the callers.
Wayne had ordered Joe to bring down his runabout at four o’clock and for half an hour he idled as he waited in his own office. He came and went as he liked by the hall door in his room so that the clerks in the outer office never knew whether he was in or not.
“Home, Joe!” and he sat silently pondering until the car drew up at his father’s door. As he hung up his coat he was conscious of a new expectation, a new exhilaration. His heart beat fast as he stood, listening intently, like one who is startled by an obscure sound in a lonely house and waits for its recurrence. He had gone home to see his father’s wife; he had gone expecting to find her alone, and he peered into the dim drawing room guardedly as though fearful of detection. A clock on the stair struck the half-hour and its chime, familiar from childhood, beat upon his ears jarringly, and sent confused alarms bounding through his pulses. He turned into the library and there the thronging hosts of memory that the scene summoned, steadied and sobered him as he stood within the portières. Then, as he swung round into the hall, he heard a light laugh above, and Mrs. Craighill came running down to meet him. Her step on the stair was noiseless; his pictorial sense was alive to the grace of her swift descent.
“Home so soon!”
She put out her hand and waited at the foot of the stair. A rose-coloured house-gown, whose half-sleeves disclosed her arms from the elbow, seemed to diffuse a glow about her. He stood staring and unsmiling where her laugh had first arrested him until she spoke again.
“I didn’t know I was so forbidding as all that!” she said and walked past him into the library. She found a seat and he threw himself into a chair a little distance away from her. They looked at each other intently, he grave and sullen, she smiling.
“Well, you did it!” he said presently.