"Do you suppose it will be $2000? Oh, Lute, just think, we'll pay for the new press right down!" "No, we won't, either," Lute said, stoutly. "I'm not going to let you spend your money on printing-presses." "Nonsense!" Alice cried, laughing and stamping her foot. Rebecca frowned and looked at her over her glasses. "Don't be unlady-like, Alice." "No, 'm," Alice said; and then she laughed at her own excitement; "it may be only $100." "It may be nothing at all," Rebecca Gray said, and got up and took her pan and bucket and went into the house. It seemed to her that if she had to hear any more of Alys Winton she would speak out and say some dreadful thing about her. But what could she say with any kind of truth? What could she say ill of that poor creature, so beloved and so harmless? For, after all, though a woman ought to see that a man's buttons are sewed on, you can't say that mere shiftlessness is a sin. Besides, she was sick for those few months. "Perhaps if my health hadn't been good, I would have been careless myself," Rebecca thought, with painful justice. But she went up-stairs to her own room and locked the door. She felt sure that it was as Alice and Luther said: there would be money, and she would be of still less consequence to her husband; for what did Robert Gray, nervously polite, really care for her economies and her good housekeeping? "Not _that_!" she said to herself, bitterly. IV "You will stay and have dinner with me," Dr. Lavendar had told the lawyer, hospitably, "and then Goliath and I will take you up the hill to Mr. Gray's house." And so, in the early afternoon, Goliath brought Mr. Carter to the Grays' door. Alice, who was on the porch, insisted that Dr. Lavendar should come in, too; she leaned into the buggy to whisper, joyously, "If it is anything nice, I want you to hear it." But for once Dr. Lavendar did not laugh and give her a kiss and call her his good-for-nothing; he got out silently, and followed Mr. Carter into the parlor, where Luther and Mrs. Gray were awaiting them. There was a tense feeling of expectation in the air. The two young people were together on the sofa, smiling and laughing, with small, whispered jokes of presses and diamond-rings and mortgages. Rebecca sat by the table, her worn hands in a trembling grip in her lap; she sat very upright, and was briefer and curter than ever, and she looked most of the time at the floor. "You have been informed of my errand, madam?" said Mr. Carter. "It is unfortunate that Mr. Gray is not at home, but perhaps you may be able to give us some information on certain points, which will at least instruct me as to whether the facts in the case warrant further reference to him for confirmation. I will ask a few questions, if you please?" "Go on," Rebecca said. "The late Mrs. Gray, the mother of this young lady," said Mr. Carter--"do you happen to know her nationality?" "English."