He has dreamed of being master here, and yet in the beginning it was not all treachery. Eugene Grandon was taking it rapidly to ruin, and he raised no hand to stay. From the first he has had a secret hope in St. Vincent's plans, but there was no one to carry them out. When the elder son came home the probability was, seeing the dubious state of affairs, he would wash his hands of the whole matter, and it would go, as many a man's life work had before, for a mere song. In this collapse he would take it with doubt and feigned unwillingness, and calling in the best talent to be had, would do his utmost to make it a success. But all this had been traversed by the vigilant brain of another. If that were all! He had also dreamed of the fair girl sitting yonder. A mere child, trained to respect and belief in her elders, and obedience of the Old World order, secluded from society, from young men, her gratitude might be worked upon as well as her father's fears for her future. Once his wife, he would move heaven and earth for her love. She should be kept in luxury, surrounded by everything that could rouse tenderness and delight; she should be the star of his life, and he would be her very slave. There were instances of Proserpine loving her dark-browed Pluto, and sharing his world. Wilmarth had brooded over this until it seemed more than probable,--certain. And here his antagonist has come with his inexorable "check!" A perfect stranger, with no hatred in his soul, only set upon by fate to play strange havoc with another's plans, to circumvent without even knowing what he did. If the place had to pass into other hands, as well his as a stranger's, he has reasoned. He was as well off as if Mr. James Grandon were alive, and he had not railed at fate then. It was because he had seen possibilities, the awful temptations of human souls. It is when the weak place is touched as by a galvanic shock that in the glare of the light we see what might be done, and yield, fearing that another walking over the same road will pause and gather the price of some betrayal of honor, while we look back with envy, the envy of the tempted, not the unassailable. And because Violet St. Vincent sits there in another man's carriage, this other man's wife, he feels that he has been defrauded of something he might have won with the better side of his nature, which will never be called out now. They will go on prospering; there is no further reason why he should bend a wire, slip a cog, or delay the hurrying wheels. Since Grandon has achieved all, then let them make money, money for which he has little use.