So Darcy came into her own. One year Gloria had given her. The year had not yet gone. But most of Aunt Sarah’s gift had. Who cared? Not Darcy. She had won her heritage of womanhood. Where, a few brief months before—and she could laugh now at the pangs and hardships of those months which were so small a price to pay for the results!—she had looked a worn thirty years old and felt like a sapless leaf, she now looked a budding twenty and felt like a baby with a drum.
Life was her drum.
All its stirring rataplan, however, could not quite drown out the grim voice of reckoning, which spoke with the accent of Sir Montrose Veyze, Bart., of Veyze Holdings, Hampshire, England.
CHAPTER X
FIVE times Mr. Thomas Harmon vainly rang the bell of the Remsen mansion. While engaged upon the sixth variation he became aware of a face in the window, scrutinizing him.
“All right,” called the face.
Mr. Harmon was then admitted through a crack scarcely adequate to his well-set, muscular frame, to the presence of Mr. Jacob Remsen, who wore an expensive dressing-gown and an expression of unutterable boredom.
“Laid up?” inquired Mr. Harmon, shaking hands.
“Bottled up,” answered the young man gloomily.
“Can I help?”