"Robert is no lover of money," she said. "To allege avarice against him as a motive is monstrous."
"Avarice, Miss Barlow? To love money is not avarice. Men grow to their opportunities. Without opportunities they wither and without money today there is no opportunity."
"The artist—does his genius gain or lose when it is gilded?" replied Emily, who felt a match even for Shagarach in the defense of her lover.
"The artist—ah, he is not of the world! Gold might well be to him an incumbrance. But to the worker among men it is the key to a thousand coffers."
There was deep feeling in these words of the criminal lawyer. Emily wondered if there might not have been a past of poverty, perhaps of spiritual aspiration and disappointment in his life, all subdued to the present indomitable aim at fortune and reputation.
"The refusal was a folly, a stripling's fatal blunder—yet a blunder of which not three men in our city are capable. Let us leave the will. It may reappear in its proper sequence. No suspicious character was seen loitering about or leaving the house on Saturday?"
"My inquiries have been limited to Miss Wesner."
"Aronson!"
The young man reappeared as before.
"Make thorough inquiry this evening in the neighborhood of the Arnold house, rear and front, for a stranger seen loitering about the premises or issuing from them on Saturday afternoon."