Katharine let Ralston accompany her within a block of Robert Lauderdale’s house and then sent him away.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “It must be nearly ten o’clock, isn’t it? Yes. People are all going out at this hour in the morning, and it’s of no especial use to be seen about together. There’s the Assembly ball to-night, and of course you’ll come and talk to me, but I shall see you—or no—I’ll write you a note, with a special delivery stamp, and post it at the District Post-Office. You’ll get it in less than an hour, and then you’ll know what uncle Robert says.”

“I know already what he’ll say,” answered Ralston. “But why mayn’t I wait for you here?”

“Now, Jack! Don’t be so ridiculously hopeless about things. And I don’t want you to wait, for I haven’t the least idea how long it may last, and as I said, there’s no object in our being seen to meet, away up here by the Park, at this hour. Good-bye.

“I hate to leave you,” said Ralston, holding out one hand, with a resigned air, and raising his hat with the other.

“I like that in you!” exclaimed Katharine, noticing the action. “I like you to take off your hat to me just the same—though you are my husband.” She looked at him a moment. “I’m so glad we’ve done it!” she added with much emphasis, and a faint colour rose in her face.

Then she turned away and walked quickly in the direction of Robert Lauderdale’s house, which was at the next corner. As she went she glanced at the big polished windows which face the Park, to see whether any one had noticed her. She knew the people who lived in one of the houses, and she had an idea that others might know her by sight, as the niece of the great man who had built the whole block. But there were only two children at one of the windows, flattening their rosy faces against the pane and drumming on it with fat hands; very smartly dressed children, with bright eyes and gayly-coloured ribbons.

As Katharine had expected, Robert Lauderdale was at home, had finished his breakfast and was in his library attending to his morning letters. She was ushered in almost immediately, and as she entered the room the rich man’s secretary stood aside

to let her pass through the door and then went out—a quiet, faultlessly dressed young man who had the air of a gentleman. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles, which looked oddly on his young face.

Robert Lauderdale did not rise to meet Katharine, as he sat sideways by a broad table, in an easy position, with one leg crossed over the other and leaning back in his deep chair. But a bright smile came into his cheerful old face, and stretching out one long arm he took her hand and drew her down and gave her a hearty kiss. Still holding her by the hand, he made her sit in the chair beside him, left vacant by the secretary.

“I’m glad to see you, my dear child!” he said warmly. “What brings you so early?”

He was a big old man and was dressed in a rough tweed of a light colour, which was very becoming to his fresh complexion. His thick hair had once been red, but had turned to a bright sandy grey, something like the sands at Newport. His face was laid out in broad surfaces, rich in healthy colour and deeply freckled where the skin was white. His keen blue eyes were small, but very clear and honest, and the eyebrows were red still, and bushy, with a few white hairs. Two deep, clean furrows extended from beside the nostrils into the carefully brushed beard, and there were four wrinkles, and no more, across the broad forehead. No one would have supposed that Robert Lauderdale was much over sixty, but in reality he was ten years older. His elder brother, the philanthropist, looked almost as though he might have been his father. It was clear that, like many of the Lauderdales, the old man had possessed great physical strength, and that he had preserved his splendid constitutional vitality even in his old age.

Katharine did not answer his question immediately. She was by no means timid, as has been seen, but she felt a little less brave and sure of herself in the presence of the head of her family than when she had been with Ralston a few minutes earlier. She was not aware of the fact that in many ways she dominated the man who was now her husband, and she would very probably not have wished to believe she did; but she was very distinctly conscious that she could never, under any imaginable circumstances, exert any direct influence over her uncle Robert, though she might persuade him to do much for her. He was by nature himself of the dominant tribe, and during forty years he had been accustomed to command with that absolute certainty of being obeyed which few positions insure as completely as very great wealth does. As she looked at him for a moment before speaking, the little opening speech she had framed began to seem absolutely inadequate, and she could not find words wherewith to compose another at such short notice. Being courageous, however, she did not hesitate long, but characteristically plunged into the very heart of the matter by telling him just what she felt.

“I’ve done something very unusual, uncle Robert,” she began. “And I’ve come to tell you all about it, and I prepared a speech for you. But it won’t do. Somehow, though I’m not a bit afraid of you—” she smiled as she met his eyes—“you seem ever so much bigger and stronger than I thought you were, now that I’ve got here.”

Uncle Robert laughed and patted her hand as it lay on the desk.

“Out with it, child!” he exclaimed. “I suppose you’re in trouble, in some way or other, and you want me to help you. Is that it?”

“You must help me,” answered Katharine. “Nobody else can. Uncle Robert—” She paused, though a pause was certainly not necessary in order to give the plain statement more force. “I’ve just been married to Jack Ralston.”

“Good—gracious—heavens!”

The old man half rose from his seat as he uttered the words, one by one, in his deep voice. Then he dropped into his chair again and stared at the young girl in downright amazement.

“What in the name of common sense induced you to do such a mad thing?” he asked very quietly, as soon as he had drawn breath.

Katharine had expected that he would be surprised, as was rather natural, and regained her coolness and decision at once.

“We’ve loved each other ever since we were children,” she said, speaking calmly and distinctly. “You know all about it, for I’ve told you before now just how I felt. Everybody opposed it—even my mother, at last—except you, and you certainly never gave us any encouragement.”

“I should think not, indeed!” exclaimed old Lauderdale, shaking his great head and beating a tattoo on the table with his heavy fingers.

“I don’t know why not, I’m sure,” Katharine answered, with rising energy. “There’s no reason in the world why we shouldn’t love each other, and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to me if there were. I should love him just the same, and he would love me. He went to my father last year, as you know, and papa treated him outrageously—wanted to forbid him to come to the house, but of course that was absurd. Jack behaved splendidly through it all—even papa had to acknowledge that, though he didn’t wish to in the least. And I hoped and hoped, and waited and waited, but things went no better. You know when papa makes up his mind to a thing, no matter how unreasonable it is, one might just as well talk to a stone wall. But I hadn’t the smallest intention of being made miserable for the rest of my life, so I persuaded Jack to marry me—”

“I suppose he didn’t need much persuasion,” observed the old gentleman, angrily.

“You’re quite wrong, uncle Robert! He didn’t want to do it at all. He had an idea that it wasn’t all right—”

“Then why in the world did he do it? Oh, I hate that sort of young fellow, who pretends that he doesn’t want to do a thing because he means to do it all the time—and knows perfectly well that it’s a low thing to do!”

“I won’t let you say that of Jack!” Katharine’s grey eyes began to flash. “If you knew how hard it was to persuade him! He only consented at last—and so did the clergyman—because I promised to come and tell you at once—”

“That’s just like the young good-for-nothing, too!” muttered the old man. “Besides—how do I know that you’re really married? How do I know that you’re not—”

“Stop, please! There’s the certificate. Please persuade yourself, before you accuse me of telling falsehoods.”

Katharine was suddenly very angry, and Robert Lauderdale realized that he had gone too far in his excitement. But he looked at the certificate carefully, then took out his note-book and wrote down the main facts with great care.

“I didn’t mean to doubt what you told me, child,” he said, while he was writing. “You’ve rather startled me with this piece of news. Human life is very uncertain,” he added, using the clergyman’s own words, “and it may be just as well that there should be a note made of this. Hadn’t you better let me keep the certificate itself? It will be quite safe with my papers.”

“I wish you would,” answered Katharine, after a moment’s thought.

The production of the certificate had produced a momentary cessation of hostilities, so to speak, but the old gentleman had by no means said his last word yet, nor Katharine either.

“Go on, my dear,” he resumed gravely. “If I’m to know anything, I should know everything, I suppose.”

“There’s not very much more to tell,” Katharine replied. “I repeat that it was all I could do to persuade Jack to take the step. He resisted to the very last—”

“Hm! He seems to have taken an active part in the proceedings in spite of his resistance—”

“Of course he did, after I had persuaded him to. It was up to that point that he resisted—and even after everything was ready—even this morning, when I met him, he told me that I ought not to have come.”

“His spirit seems to have been willing to have some sense—but the flesh was weak,” observed the old gentleman, without a smile.

“I insist upon taking the whole responsibility,” said Katharine. “It was I who proposed it, and it was I who made him do it.”

“You’re evidently the strong-minded member, my dear.”

“In this—yes. I love him, and I made up my mind that it was right to love him and that I would marry him. Now I have.”

“It is impossible to make a more direct statement of an unpleasant truth. And now that you’ve done it, you mean that your family shall take the consequences—which shows a strong sense of that responsibility you mentioned—and so you’ve come to me. Why didn’t you come to me yesterday? It would have been far more sensible.”

“I did think of coming yesterday afternoon—and then it rained, and Charlotte came—”

“Yes—it rained—I remember.” Robert Lauderdale’s mouth quivered, as though he should have liked to smile at the utter insignificance of the shower as compared with the importance of Katharine’s action. “You might have taken a cab. There’s a stand close by your house, at the Brevoort.”

“Oh, yes—of course—though I should have had to ask mamma for some money, and that would have been very awkward, you know. And if I had really and truly meant to come, I suppose I shouldn’t have minded the rain.”

“Well—never mind the rain now!” Uncle Robert spoke a little impatiently. “You didn’t come—and you’ve come to-day, when it’s too late to do anything—except regret what you’ve done.”

“I don’t regret it at all—and I don’t intend to,” Katharine answered firmly.

“And what do you mean to do in the future? Live with Ralston’s mother? Is that your idea?”

“Certainly not. I want you to give Jack something to do, and we’ll live together, wherever you make him go—if it’s to Alaska.”

“Oh—that’s it, is it? I begin to understand. I suppose Jack would think it would simplify matters very much if I gave him a hundred thousand dollars, wouldn’t he? That would be an even shorter way of giving him the means to support his family.”

“Jack wouldn’t take money from you,” answered Katharine, quickly.

“Wouldn’t he? If it were not such a risk, I’d try it, just to convince you. You seem to have a very exalted idea of Jack Ralston, altogether. I’ve not. Do you know anything about his life?”

“Of course I do. I know how you all talk about the chances you’ve given him—between you. And I know just what they were—to try his hand at being a lawyer’s clerk first, and a banker’s clerk afterwards, with no salary and—”

“If he had stuck to either for a year he would have had a very different sort of chance,” interrupted the old gentleman. “I told him so. There was little enough expected of him, I’m sure—just to go to an office every day, as most people do, and write what he was told to write. It wasn’t much to ask. Take the whole thing to pieces and look at it. What can he do? What do most men do who must make their way in the world? He has no exceptional talent, so he can’t go in for art or literature or that sort of thing. His father wouldn’t educate him for the navy, where he would have found his level, or where the Admiral’s name would have helped him. He didn’t get a technical education, which would have given him a chance to try engineering. There were only two things left—the law or business. I explained all that to him at the time. He shook his head and said he wanted something active. That’s just the way all young men talk who merely don’t want to stay in-doors and work decently hard, like other people. An active life! What is an active life? Ranching, I suppose he means, and he thinks he should do well on a ranch merely because he can ride fairly well. Riding fairly well doesn’t mean much on a ranch. The men out there can all ride better than he ever could, and he knows nothing about horses, nor cattle, nor about anything useful. Besides, with his temper, he’d be shot before he’d been out there a year—”

“But there are all sorts of other things, and you forget Hamilton Bright, who began on a ranch—”

“Ham Bright is made of different stuff. He had been brought up in the country, too, and his father was a Western man—from Cincinnati, at all events, though that isn’t West nowadays. No. Jack Ralston could never succeed at that—and I haven’t a ranch to give him, and I certainly won’t go and buy land out there now. I repeat that his only chance lay in law or business. Law would have done better. He had the advantage of having a degree to begin with, and I would have found him a partner, and there’s a lot of law connected with real estate which doesn’t need a genius to work it, and which is fairly profitable. But no! He wanted something active! That’s exactly what a kitten wants when it runs round after its own tail—and there’s about as much sense in it. Upon my word, there is!”

“You’re very hard on him, uncle Robert. And I don’t think you’re quite reasonable. It was a good deal the old Admiral’s fault—”

“I’m not examining the cause, I’m going over the facts,” said old Lauderdale, impatiently. “I tried him, and I very soon got to the end of him. He meant to do nothing. It was quite clear from the first. If he’d been a starving relation it would have been different. I should have made him work whether he liked it or not. As it was, I gave it up as a bad job. He wants to be idle, and he has the means to be idle if he’s willing to live on his mother. She has ten thousand dollars a year, and a house of her own, and they can live very well on that—just as well as they want to. When his mother dies that’s what Jack will have, and if he chooses to marry on it—”

“You seem to forget that he’s married already—”

“By Jove! I did! But it doesn’t change things in the least. My position is just the same as it was before. With ten thousand a year Katharine Ralston couldn’t support a family—”

“Indeed, I could! I’m Katharine Ralston, and I should be—”

“Nonsense! You’re Katharine Lauderdale. I’m speaking of Jack’s mother. I suppose you’ll admit that she’s not able to support her son’s wife out of what she has. It would mean a great change in her way of living. At present she doesn’t need more. She’s often told me so. If she wanted money for herself, just to spend on herself, mind you—I’d give her—well, I won’t say how much. But she doesn’t. It’s for Jack that she wants it. She’s perfectly honest. She’s just like a man in her way of talking, anyhow. And I don’t want Jack to be throwing my money into the streets. I can do more good with it in other ways, and she gives him more than is good for him, as it is. People seem to think that if a man has more than a certain amount of money, he’s under a sort of moral obligation to society to throw it out of the window. That’s a point of view I never could understand, though it comes quite naturally to Jack, I daresay. But I go back. I want to insist on that circumstance, and I want you to see the facts just as they are. If I were to settle another hundred thousand dollars on Jack’s mother, it would be precisely the same thing, at present, as though I’d settled it on him, or on you. Now you say he wouldn’t take any money if I offered it to him.”

“No. He wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t let him if he wanted to.”

“You needn’t be afraid, my dear. I’ve no intention of doing anything so good-natured and foolish. If anything could complete Jack’s ruin for all practical purposes, that would. No, no! I won’t do it. I’ve given Kate Ralston a good many valuable jewels at one time and another since she married the Admiral—she’s fond of good stones, you know. If Jack chooses to go to her and tell her the truth, and if she chooses to sell them and give him the money, it will keep you very comfortably for a long time—”

“How can you suggest such a thing!” cried Katharine, indignantly. “As though he would ever stoop to think of it!”

“Well—I hope he wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be pretty, if he did. But I’m a practical man, my dear, and I’m an old fellow and I’ve seen the world on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for over seventy years. So I look at the case from all possible points of view, fair and unfair, as most people would. But I don’t mean to be unfair to Jack.”

“I think you are, uncle Robert. If you’ve proved anything, you’ve proved that he isn’t fit for a ranch—and so you say there’s nothing left but the law or business. It seems to me that there are ever so many things—”

“If you’ll name them, you’ll help me,” said old Lauderdale, seriously.

“I mean active things—to do with railroads, and all that—” Katharine stopped, feeling that her knowledge was rather vague.

“Oh! You mean to talk about railroading. I don’t own any railroads myself, as I daresay you know, but I’ve picked up some information about them. Apart from the financing of them—and that’s banking, which Jack objects to—there’s the law part, which he doesn’t like either, and the building of them, which he’s too old to learn, and the mechanical part of them, such as locomotives and rolling stock, which he can’t learn either—and then there are two places which men covet and for which there’s an enormous competition amongst the best men for such matters in the country—I mean the freight agent’s place and the passenger agent’s. They are two big men, and they understand their business practically, because they’ve learned it practically. To understand freight, a man must begin by putting on rough clothes and going down to the shed and handling freight himself, with the common freight men. There are gentlemen who have done that sort of thing—just as fine gentlemen as Jack Ralston, but made of quite different stuff. And it takes a very long time to reach a high position in that way, though it’s worth having when you get it. Do you understand?”

“Yes—I suppose I do. But one always hears of men going off and succeeding in some out-of-the-way place—”

“But you hear very little about the ones who fail, and they’re the majority. And you hear, still more often, people saying, as they do of Jack Ralston, that he ought to go away, and show some enterprise, and get something to do in the West. It’s always the West, because most of the people who talk know nothing whatever about it. I tell you, Katharine, my dear, it’s just as hard to start in this country as it is anywhere else, though men get on faster after they’re once started—and all this talk about something active and an out-of-door existence is pure nonsense. It’s nothing else. A man may have luck soon or late or never, but the safest plan for city-bred men is to begin at a bank. I did, and I’ve not regretted it. Just as soon as a fellow shows that he has something in him, he’s wanted, and if he has friends, as Jack has, they’ll help him. But as long as a man hangs about the clubs all day with a cigarette in his mouth, sensible people, who want workers, will fight shy of him. Just tell Jack that, the next time you see him. It’s all I’ve got to say, and if it doesn’t satisfy him nothing can.”

The old gentleman’s anger had quite disappeared while he was speaking, though it was ready to burst out again on very small provocation. He spoke so earnestly, and put matters so plainly, that Katharine began to feel a blank disappointment closing in between her and her visions of the future in regard to an occupation for John. For the rest, she would have been just as determined to marry him after hearing all that her uncle had to say as she had been before. But she could not help showing what she felt, in her face and in the tone of her voice.

“Still—men do succeed, uncle Robert,” she said, clinging rather desperately to the hope that he had only been lecturing her and had some pleasant surprise in store.

“Of course they do, my dear,” he answered. “And it’s possible for Jack to succeed, too, if he’ll go about it in the right way.”

“How?” asked Katharine, eagerly, and immediately her face brightened again.

“Just as I said. If he’ll show that he can stick to any sort of occupation for a year, I’ll see what can be done.”

“But that sticking, as you call it—all day at a desk—is just what he can’t do. He wasn’t made for it, he—”

“Well then, what is he made for? I wish you would get him to make a statement explaining his peculiar gifts—”

“Now don’t be angry again, uncle Robert! This is rather a serious matter for Jack and me. Do you tell me, in real earnest, quite, quite honestly, that as far as you know the only way for Jack to earn his living is to go into an office for a year, to begin with? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes, child. Upon my word—there, you’ll believe me now, won’t you? That’s the only way I can see, if he really means to work. My dear—I’m not a boy, and I’m very fond of you—I’ve no reason for deceiving you, have I?”

“No, uncle dear—but you were angry at first, you know.”

“No doubt. But I’m not angry now, nor are you. We’ve discussed the matter calmly. And we’re putting out of the question the fact that if I chose to give Jack anything in the way of money, my cheque-book is in this drawer, and I have the power to do it—without any inconvenience,” added the very rich man, thoughtfully. “But you tell me that he would not accept it. It’s hard to believe, but you know him better than I do, and I accept your statement. I may as well tell you that for the honour of the family and to get rid of all this nonsense about a secret marriage I’m perfectly willing to do this. Listen. I’ll invite you all—the whole family—to my place on the river, and I’ll tell them all what has happened and we’ll have a sort of ‘post facto’ wedding there, very quietly, and then announce it to the world. And I’ll settle enough on you, personally—not on your husband—to give you an income you can manage to live on comfortably—”

“Oh!” cried Katharine. “You’re too kind, uncle Robert—and I thank you with all my heart—just as though we could take it from you—I do, indeed—”

“Never mind that, child. But you say you can’t take it. You mean, I suppose, that if it were your money—if I made it so—Jack would refuse to live on it. Let’s be quite clear.”

“That’s exactly it. He would never consent to live on it. He would feel—he’d be quite right, too—that we had got married first in order to force money out of you, for the honour of the family, as you said yourself.”

“Yes. And it’s particularly hard to force money out of me, too, though I’m not stingy, my dear. But I must say, if you had meant to do it, you couldn’t have invented anything more ingenious, or more successful. I couldn’t allow a couple of young Lauderdales to go begging. They’d have pictures of me in the evening papers, you know. And apart from that, I’m devilish fond of you—I mean I’m very fond of you—you must excuse an old bachelor’s English, sometimes. But you won’t take the money, so that settles it. Then there’s no other way but for Jack to go to work like a man and stick to it. To give him a salary for doing no work would be just the same as to give him money without making any pretence about it. He can have a desk at my lawyer’s, or he can go back to Beman Brothers’,—just as he prefers. If he’ll do that, and honestly try to understand what he’s doing, he shan’t regret it. If he’ll do what there is to be done, I’ll make him succeed. I could make him succeed if he had ‘failure’ written all over him in letters a foot high—because it’s within the bounds of possibility. But it’s of no use to ask me to do what’s not possible. I can’t make this country over again. I can’t create a convenient, active, out-of-door career at a good salary, when the thing doesn’t exist. In other words, I can’t work miracles, and he won’t take money, so he must content himself to run on lines of possibility. My lawyer would do most things for me, and so would Beman Brothers. Beman, to please me, would make Jack a partner, as he has done for Ham Bright. But Jack must either work or put in capital, and he has no capital to put in, and won’t take any from me. And to be a partner in a law firm, a man must have some little experience—something beyond his bare degree. Do you see it all now, Katharine?”

“Indeed, I do,” she answered, with a little sigh. “And meanwhile—uncle Robert—meanwhile—”

“Yes—I know—you’re married. That’s the very devil, that marriage business.”

He seemed to be thinking it over. There was something so innocently sincere in his strong way of putting it that Katharine could not help smiling, even in her distress. But she waited for him to speak, foreseeing what he would say, and did.

“There’s nothing for it,” he said, at last. “You won’t take money, and you can’t live with your mother, and as for telling your father at this stage—well, you know him! It really wouldn’t be safe. So there’s nothing for it but—I hate to say it, my dear,” he added kindly.

“But to keep it a secret, you mean,” she said sadly.

“You see,” he answered, in a tone that was almost apologetic, “it would be a mistake, socially, to say you were married, and to go on living each with your own family—besides, your father would know it like everybody else. He’d make your life very—unbearable, I should think.”

“Yes—he would. I know that.”

“Well—come and see me again soon, and we’ll talk it over. You’ll have to consider it just as a—I don’t know exactly how to put it—a sort of formal betrothal between yourselves, such as they used to have in old times. And I suppose I’m the head of the family, though your grandfather is older than I am. Anyhow, you must consider it as though you were solemnly engaged, with the approval of the head of the family, and as though you were to be married, say, next year. Can you do that? Can you make him look at it in that light, child?”

“I’ll try, since there’s really nothing else to be done. But oh, uncle Robert, I wish I’d come before. You’ve been so kind! Why did it rain yesterday—oh, why did it rain?”