“Reliance,” he cried, “you don’t know--by the Lord, you don’t know what that girl has come to be to me. I--I love her as much as I did--as I did Bella, my own wife, when she was living. I swear I believe that’s so. She’ll marry somebody some day; I am reconciled to that--or I try to be. It’s natural. It is what is bound to happen. But I’ll have something to say about who her husband shall be. I know men and it’s got to be a mighty fine man who can satisfy me he’s the right husband for her. A good-for-nothing who wastes his time painting chromos--a boy without any business sense--” “How do you know he hasn’t got any business sense?” “Would he be a picture painter if he had? And a Cook! Good Lord! think of it! a Cook!... There! What’s the use talking to you? You are a sentimental old maid and all that counts with you is the mush you read in the fool books you get out of the library. If you loved that girl the way I do--” She had risen now and she broke in upon him sharply. “I do,” she vowed. “I love her as much as you do and more, perhaps. She lived with me years longer than she has with you and I love her as much as you ever dreamed of doin’. Yes, and a whole lot more unselfishly--that I know, too.” “But, Reliance, to give her up to--” “Oh, be still! I gave her up to you, didn’t I? Do you think that wasn’t a wrench?” He could not deny it, for he knew it to be true. He shrugged and picked up his hat. “Good-by,” he said. She called his name. “Foster--wait!” she ordered. “Now I am goin’ to tell you somethin’ it is plain you haven’t heard. I wonder Esther hasn’t told you. She must know it. Probably she will tell you soon, she certainly ought to. There was a man here this mornin’ from Denboro. His name is Pratt, he peddles fish, probably you know him. Well, he told me he heard last night at the Denboro post office that Bob Griffin was plannin’ to go to Paris to study paintin’. His grandfather had said he might and he was leavin’ almost right away, inside of three weeks, anyhow.... Perhaps you see what that is likely to mean, so far as keepin’ him and Esther apart is concerned.” He stared at her incredulously; he could not credit the story. “Bosh!” he snorted. “I don’t believe it. It’s all a lie. They’ve got it mixed up. Somebody has heard that Esther is going, and of course some of them know he has been coming to the house, and so they’ve pieced together a gaff tops’l out of two rags and a rope’s end, same as they generally do.” “No. That is what I thought at first, but it isn’t that. Pratt heard about it again from the Cooks’ hired girl and she heard Bob and his grandfather talkin’ it over at the dinner table. It is true, he is goin’. And of course it is perfectly plain why he is goin’.... Now, Foster, what will you do about it?” He did not answer immediately. He stood before her, his florid face growing steadily redder. Then he struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand.