"Now Persis is as dainty as a cat, and as hard to boss. And she has a fatal attraction for men who can't afford to keep her. Willie's the only suitor she ever had that has more money than she could spend. And I think she likes him less than anything on earth except work."
Forbes was tempted to confess to Mrs. Neff what he had divulged to Ten Eyck, but he postponed the miserable business. It was an uncongenial company for proclaiming one's poverty.
The surroundings were as tempting as Naboth's vineyard was to David. He understood why men grew unscrupulous in the hunt for great wealth.
Mrs. Neff led Forbes about the place, which she knew well. But the beauties were only torments to him. Below the climbing marble stairway to the temple there was a broken stairway winding down the hill. It meandered like the dry bed of a stream, between brick walls, bordered with flowers, with now and then a resting-place, or some quaint niche where a little statue smiled or a fountain trilled and tinkled.
At two stages of the descent there were circular levels with ornate shelters and aristocratic plants. From the lowest shelf there was only a path dropping down the long hill to a distant wall; beyond this a ragged woods like a mob of poor shut out from a rich man's place.
"That wall is the end of the Enslee estate," said Mrs. Neff.
"There is an end to it, then?" said Forbes, more bitterly than he intended.
"There's an end to everything, my boy," Mrs. Neff brooded, with a far-off bitterness of her own—"an end to wealth and love and—everything."
"Who owns that place off there, I wonder?" said Forbes.
"Nobody in particular," said Mrs. Neff. "Some old cantankerous absentee that won't sell. Do you want to buy it to be near Mrs. Enslee? Willie has offered him all sorts of money, but he won't let go. You might have better luck."