first taste of luxury suddenly brought before her eyes, stripped bare
of everything except its pitiful cruelty, that ceaseless struggle for
life in which it seemed to her that all of them had been engaged, year
after year. She shivered a little as she thought of them, shivered for
fear she should fail now that the chance had come of some day being able
to help them. Absolute obedience, absolute truth! If these two things
were all, she could hold on, she was sure of it.

A messenger boy was brought in, and delivered a letter to her uncle. He
read and destroyed it at once.

"There is no answer," he said.

The messenger protested.

"I am to wait, sir, until you give me one," he said. "The gentleman said
it was most important. I was to find you anywhere, anyhow, and get an
answer of some sort."

"How much," Mr. Phineas Duge asked, "were you to receive if you took
back an answer?"

"The gentleman promised me a dollar, sir," the boy answered.

Mr. Duge put his hand into his pocket.

"Here are two dollars," he said. "Go away at once. There is no answer.
There will not be one. You can tell Mr. Hamilton that I said so."

The boy departed. Her uncle looked across at Virginia and smiled.