Two weeks ran on in the quiet routine of the Quaker home and the increasing work of the great shipping merchant. De Courval was more and more used by Wynne in matters other than copying letters in French. Sometimes, too, he was trusted with business affairs demanding judgment, and although Wynne spoke no word of praise, neither was there any word of censure, and he watched the clerk with interest and growing regard. Twice he sent him to New York, and once on an errand to Baltimore, where he successfully collected some long-standing debts. A new clerk had come, and De Courval, to his relief, was no longer expected to sweep out the counting-house.
By degrees Wynne fully realized that he had found a helper of unusual capacity, and more and more, as the great and varied business attracted De Courval, he was taken into Wynne's confidence, and saw the ships come and go, and longed to share the peril and see the wonders of the ocean. There were great tuns of wine from Madeira on the pier or in the cellars. Gentlemen came to taste it, men with historic names—General Wayne, Colonel Lear for the President, and Mr. Justice Yeates. De Courval was bade to knock out bungs and dip in tasting vials. Also Miss Wynne came to refill her cellar, but took small notice of him. He was out of favor for a season, and her nephew had laughed at her remonstrances.
"A thoroughbred put to the work of a farm-horse!"
"Nonsense, Aunt Gainor! Let him alone. You can not spoil him, as you did me. There is stuff in the fellow worth a dozen of my clerks. At six they are gone. If there is work to do, he stays till nine. What that man wants, he will get. What he sets himself to do, he does. Let him alone."
"A miserably paid clerk," she cried. "He deserves no better. I wash my hands of him."
"There is soap in the closet," he laughed.
She went away angry, and saw the young noble talking with a ruddy gentleman whose taste in wine has made his name familiar at the dining-tables of the last hundred years. Major Butler was asking the vicomte to dine, and promising a perilous education in the vintages of Madeira.
When the major had gone, Mr. Wynne sent for his clerk. To be opposed was apt to stiffen his Welsh obstinacy. "Your wages are to be now, sir, two hundred and fifty livres,—fifty dollars a month,—and you are doing well, very well; but the clerks are not to know, except Mr. Potts." He owed this unusual advance to Miss Wynne, but probably the master was as little aware of what had caused it as was the irate spinster. De Courval thanked him quietly, knowing perfectly well that he had fairly earned what was so pleasantly given.
It was now the Saturday sennight mentioned by Margaret as the day when Mr. Hamilton was to come to settle certain small business matters with Mrs. Swanwick. Some wit, or jealous dame, as Schmidt had said, called Mrs. Swanwick's the Quaker salon; and, in fact, men of all types of opinion came hither. Friends there were, the less strict, and at times some, like Waln, to protest in their frank way against the too frequent company of world's people, and to go away disarmed by gentle firmness. Mrs. Swanwick's love of books and her keen interest in every new thing, and now the opening mind and good looks of Margaret, together with the thoughtful neutrality of Schmidt, captured men, young and old, who were apt to come especially on a Saturday afternoon, when there was leisure even for busy statesmen. Hither came Aaron Burr—the woman-hawk, Aunt Gainor called him, with his dark, fateful face; Pickering, in after days of the War Department; Wolcott, to be the scarce adequate successor of Hamilton; Logan, and gay cousins—not often more than one or two at a time—with, rarely, the Master of the Rolls and Robert Morris, and Mr. Justice Chew—in fact, what was best in the social life of the city.
Mr. Hamilton was shut up with Mrs. Swanwick in the withdrawing-room, busy. It was now too late to expect visitors—five o'clock of a summer afternoon. The vicomtesse avoided this interesting society, and at last René ceased to urge her to share what he himself found so agreeable. Margaret sat entranced in the "Castle of Otranto," hardly hearing the click, click, of the fencing-foils on the grass plot not far away. Birds were in the air; a woodpecker was busy on a dead tree; bees, head down, were accumulating honey for the hive at the foot of the garden; and a breeze from the river was blowing through the hall and out at the hospitably open front door—a peaceful scene, with still the ring and clash of the foils and De Courval's merry laughter.