Mrs. Peyton uttered an assenting sigh. "It was a great grief to us--a great
loss to my son."

"Yes--I know. I can imagine what you must have felt. And then it was so
unlucky that it should have happened just now."

Mrs. Peyton shot a reconnoitring glance at her profile. "His dying, you
mean, on the eve of success?"

Miss Verney turned a frank smile upon her. "One ought to feel that, of
course--but I'm afraid I am very selfish where my friends are concerned,
and I was thinking of Mr. Peyton's having to give up his work at such a
critical moment." She spoke without a note of deprecation: there was a
pagan freshness in her opportunism.

Mrs. Peyton was silent, and the girl continued after a pause: "I suppose
now it will be almost impossible for him to finish his drawings in time.
It's a pity he hadn't worked out the whole scheme a little sooner. Then the
details would have come of themselves."

Mrs. Peyton felt a contempt strangely mingled with exultation. If only the
girl would talk in that way to Dick!

"He has hardly had time to think of himself lately," she said, trying to
keep the coldness out of her voice.

"No, of course not," Miss Verney assented; "but isn't that all the more
reason for his friends to think of him? It was very dear of him to give up
everything to nurse Mr. Darrow--but, after all, if a man is going to get on