Alvin never gave anything, however, without consulting his niece. “The money is yours, not mine,” he would say to her. But she would answer: “Ours, uncle.”
In these days Alvin was happier than he had ever been in all his ill-starred life. But he often suffered acutely. There were days when he never emerged from the little wood where no one but himself ever entered. He could not forgive himself for the crime he had committed, though his victim had forgiven him.
He was now much troubled about Eweretta. She had refused Dan Webster’s offer, and she had told him in so many words that she no longer loved Philip. What was to become of her when he and Mrs. Le Breton were gone?
She would have money, certainly, but Alvin wanted for her to be a happy wife and mother. It was at her instigation that he had discouraged callers. How would she meet with a man she could marry if she insisted upon isolation?
He had noticed again and again—notably at that first meet of the Bexhill Harriers—how much admiration she had excited. But she was firm in her resolve.
“I am quite happy, uncle,” she would say.
She spoke the truth, for though she felt that her romance of love was over, and that Philip had resigned himself to the loss of the girl he had once so passionately loved, still, she had the joy of seeing Philip become more the old Philip of her love. He was conquering that hardness, that care for social advancement, which had so spoiled him. She had a curious feeling that she was indeed dead, and was watching Philip from another world. Perhaps she might help him. She had first found the pure joy that being a helper brings, in seeing Mrs. Le Breton become more cheerful under her influence. Mrs. Le Breton had had an utterly hopeless expression in the first months, but now she could even laugh.
Then Eweretta had helped Alvin. She was always on the look-out for him after one of his days shut up in the little wood.
He was sure of finding her at the gate that led from the wood to the garden, even though November mists lay thick about the bushes. She would slip her arm through the rough Colonial’s and tell him she had missed him.
What this meant to the ill-starred Thirteenth Man he alone knew, nor did he himself realize to the full.