At this Mr. Trevor chuckled more and more; he rubbed his hands with glee.

“She is quite capable of it,” he cried, delighted, “quite capable of it. She is a clever woman, Lucy. I have always had a great admiration for Mrs. Stone.”

“Capable of what?” said Lucy, almost angry. She, for her part, had a great admiration for Mrs. Stone. She had a girl’s belief in and loyalty to, the elder woman, who yet was not too old to be out of sympathy with girls. She admired her mature beauty, her dress, everything about her, and to hear Mrs. Stone laughed at was painful to Lucy. It affected that esprit de corps which is next to self-regard, or sometimes even goes before it. She fell, her own moral standing involved when any one questioned, or seemed to question, the superiority of her leader. It was almost the only occasion on which any latent gleam of temper came to Lucy’s mild eyes.

Mr. Trevor laughed again.

“You don’t understand it, my dear,” he said, “it’s a joke between Mrs. Stone and me. She is capable of making me a party to my own defeat,” he said, with a new series of chuckles, “of bringing me into the conspiracy against myself. That’s what I call clever, Lucy; oh, she’s a very able woman! but let us hope this time she won’t be so successful as she deserves. Forewarned is forearmed; I know now what I’ve got to look forward to, and I hope she won’t find me an easy prey, my dear, thanks to you.”

“I can not in the least, tell what you mean, papa,” said Lucy, with dignity, “and if it is anything against Mrs. Stone, I don’t want to know; and I hope she will be successful, whatever she wishes to do—though I don’t know what it is,” the girl added, with vehemence quite unusual to her. It brought the color to her usually pale cheek. She got up from her chair with angry haste. “I am going to get ready for dinner,” she said, “and if I have said anything to set you against Mrs. Stone, I did not mean it, and I am very sorry. It must be my fault, for I am quite sure there is nothing wrong in anything she wants to do.”

It was as if Lucy flounced out of the room, so different was it from her usual calm, though even now her demeanor was quiet enough. But her father was not much affected by the girl’s vehemence. He sat looking after her, and chuckled, watching her gray gown whisk—nay, almost whisk—the word was too violent to be employed to any movement of Lucy’s—round the corner of the big screen, and thought to himself how wise he had been, and how clever in choosing an instructress for Lucy of whom she thought so well. Mrs. Stone’s design, which he thought he had found out, amused, and, indeed, pleased him, too. He liked to see that this fortune, of which he thought so much, produced a corresponding effect upon others, and, indeed, would have been disappointed if there had been nobody “after” it during his life-time. This was the first, and he chuckled over the advent of the suitor, whom he determined to play and amuse himself with. That Mrs. Stone should have begun to scheme already did not displease, rather flattered him, especially as it gave him a fresh evidence of his penetration in finding her out, and confidence in his own power of baffling her. Another man might have been taken in, but not he. There he sat complacent, while Lucy changed her gray gown for a blue one.

All these habits and customs of a life more refined than his own, the old man had done his best to train his daughter into. For a time he had even gone so far as to put himself into an evening coat for Lucy’s sake, but increasing weakness had persuaded him to give up that penitential ceremony. Still he exacted, rigorously and religiously, that she should dress for dinner, and would indeed have made her come down with bare shoulders every evening to the homely meal, but for the interference of Mrs. Stone, who had declared it “old-fashioned,” with great energy, to the complete annihilation of poor old Trevor, who had thought himself certain of this important special feature of high life.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE LAST CLAUSE

It is not to be supposed that in the tête-à-tête dinner that followed Lucy was set free from the interminable subject of that fortune which occupied all her father’s thoughts. The idea of perfect freedom in seven years had but newly dawned upon him—though, as soon as he had thought of it, he felt it to be, as he had said, the natural crown of his plan, and climax of his thoughts. Up to the moment the great idea had dawned upon him, there had been a little sense of imperfection in his plans. They were elaborate preparations for—nothing. But now he had seized the end to which all the preparations led. Neither the Fords nor Lady Randolph could be expected to live forever in order to keep Lucy under subjection, nor would she always be under the superintendence of the matrimonial committee. The absurdity became apparent to the framer of the scheme just as he found the deliverance from it. And now that the climax had been attained, all the parts fell into due subordination. Restraint until she had fully tried all the preliminaries of life and learned to estimate the worth of time, and then full freedom and the control of herself and all that belonged to her. It seemed to old Trevor, as he thought it over, a beautiful scheme; to-morrow he would put fully on record these last stipulations, and when that was done there would be no more to do but to gather his garments round him and go out of the way. It must not be supposed, however, that any real idea of getting out of the way was in the old man’s mind. He could not doubt that somehow he would still be in the midst of it, though he professed to be quite sure of dying and passing into another life—that was a matter of course; but when he rubbed his hands with satisfaction over the completeness of this plan, there was no feeling in his mind that completeness involved conclusion. On the contrary, he seemed to see the prospect widening out before him. He enjoyed in anticipation not only the admirable wisdom of all his own stipulations, but even the amusing complications to which they would give birth; and then with a thrill of pride and satisfaction looked forward to the time of her freedom and happy reign, and power of self-disposal, nor ever once said to himself, “I shall be out of it all—what will it be to me?”