She thought a good deal in the course of the first weeks following old Bagsbury’s death and the reading of the will. She could not forget the scene she had witnessed, and in which she had finally taken a part, in the dingy little private office at the bank. She felt keenly the pathos of the old man’s death there, over the desk which held his whole world; his head among the papers which had received all the affection that his withered soul could give. But it was not the old man’s death that had made her cry that night as she drove home alone in the jolting carriage; it was the look she had seen in the son’s face as he stood there, his back to the still figure on the sofa, and his eyes fastened greedily on those same papers. In this sordid presence even death seemed to lose its dignity. Yes, Dick had cried all the way home, simply with an uncontrollable disgust. And afterward, so soon afterward, she had seen his father’s will become for John simply a legal document, which stood in his way, which was to be evaded, if possible, because evasion was swifter and surer than direct attack. For accomplishing his purpose no tool seemed too small, no way too devious. His disappointment over the will was not at all because it showed that he had not gained his father’s confidence, but simply because it postponed or perhaps made impossible his getting control of his father’s fortune. Dick knew how this would have affected her six months before. She was puzzled and a little ashamed to find herself justifying it now, and she feared that her friendship for John was blinding her. None the less it came about that Dick entered enthusiastically into the fight for the control of the stock. Hers was a spectator’s part, and night after night, when around the big desk in the library sat John and Robins and Sponley, and sometimes old Dawson, who had retired from business, but whom John continued to regard as a sort of commercial godfather; when the cigar smoke eddied thick about the reading lamp, she would sit in the easy-chair in the darkest corner of the room, listening to the telegraphic sentences which were shot back and forth. Then there were the evenings, and these too were frequent, when Jack Dorlin would come over and listen with what grace he could to Dick’s account of the progress of the struggle. It did not interest him particularly; but as Dick would not be induced to talk of anything else, he had to make the best of it. But one night his self-control gave way. Dick had been telling him, with great gusto, how more and more of the outside stock was either coming under John’s control or was being promised to his support, and how old Mr. Moffat had already quarrelled violently with Mr. Meredith and Mr. Cartwright, and that he was coming round to John’s side in a most satisfactory manner. She narrated it, as she did nearly everything, with just the lightest possible stress on the humorous aspect of it; but Jack sat through it all with unshaken solemnity.