He heard her say, as from a great distance: "It was fine of you to come like this, Tom.... I do love Jack; I thought once, that I loved you, Tom.... That was strange, wasn't it? It's strange to sit here now, with you, telling you of it.... Though, of course, you don't care.... He will come soon, won't he? You don't know how I've missed him, Tom.... It would be a strange situation, wouldn't it, if we hadn't known one another so well, and cared for one another, so deeply in such a friendly, brother-and-sisterly sort of way.... I think, in some ways, I ought to be angry with Jack for not coming himself.... But it's as though you were my big brother, Tom.... You know how Jack feels toward me; and so you are anxious to act as sort of a buffer, in case everything isn't--eh--as it should be.... It was fine of you, Tom; and you know how I appreciate it! ..." What else she said, he did not know. It seemed a thousand, thousand years ere he rose to his feet. He was suffering--When a woman loves, her intuition is dead.... At length he found himself on the street. But the sunshine was gone, and the air was dead.... He found Schuyler, and told him.... He watched him leap through the door, forgetting his hat--heard him pounding down the hall--heard the street door as it slammed behind him. And then-- It's pretty hard, you know, to lose a father, and a mother, and such a girl as the daughter of Jimmy Blair; and all within an eighteen month. [Illustration] CHAPTER TWELVE. A FOREIGN MISSION In the next few years, God was indeed good to John Schuyler. Health he kept; honors came to him, and the respect of men and of women. There were those who loved him, many; and of those who hated him there were a few; which is well, inasmuch as the hatred of some men may be the highest praise--the highest favor--that they have to bestow. A child came to them, at length--to him and to the daughter of Jimmy Blair; and that child was as like to the daughter of Jimmy Blair as the daughter had been like her mother. A part of the time they lived in the city; but most of their days were spent out at the Larchmont place, on the Sound, that John Stuyvesant Schuyler had built so long ago. And there they were very, very happy. The quiet, peaceful beauty of "Grey Rocks" more than ever appealed to the soul of Tom Blake as he stood upon the bridge of his yacht, "The Vagrant," and watched the ever-enlarging lawn apparently rush toward him. He closed his eyes, a little. The sun was very bright.... He turned toward the Long Island shore, hazy and unreal in the mists of the morning.... When he turned back again, the huge, sea-going craft, a thing of glistening white and shining brass, was making a wide, graceful sweep in the churning water, and the house had ceased to rush down upon him. It now stood inviting, beckoning, as close at hand as it were safe to be.