“Mrs. Landray's attachments are all traditional. She is probably quite as fond of him this very minute as she will be ten years hence.” “I'd almost say you were tricky, Jake; one gets damn little satisfaction out of you,” said Gibbs. He made one or two futile efforts after this to bring the lawyer back to the matter he had most at heart, but Benson baffled him, and in the end Gibbs retired to his room considerately helped thither by his host, and quite nonplussed by the other's perverseness. Gibbs lingered in Benson two days as the lawyer's guest, and on the morning of the third started home to his Julia and the Golden West Saloon. He was satisfied that he had acted rather handsomely in a crisis; and he was cheered and sustained by the conviction that both Benson and Virginia appeared fully sensible of this. “She's the reason Jake never married; well, in spite of his luck he's wanted one thing he couldn't have;” and the thought gave him no little satisfaction, his feeling toward Benson being then rather one of censure. “He owed it to me to say what he'd do for Steve's boy; it was distinctly my right to know, I wish I'd told him that.” It might have been an added comfort to Gibbs had he known that his departure left the lawyer rather depressed, and wondering moodily why he should have the feeling he knew he had for Stephen and Stephen's boy. It seemed a long way back to the directness of those motives that had once influenced him for good. He rancorously lived over the past and the days slipped forward while he nursed his grudge. He did not see Virginia, and he made no effort to see the child. Virginia's feeling of hurt and injury grew as the months passed and he made no sign; then quite unexpectedly he surprised her by calling. “I suppose you have counted me rather remiss in the matter of Stephen's boy, Virginia,” he began smoothly. “I don't know why you should think that. Perhaps there was no reason why you should feel any interest in him,” answered Virginia. “You don't think that, Virginia. You know that Stephen wrote me just before his death? I understood Gibbs to say that he had told you of this letter—of its purport.” “Yes,” but she glanced at him in some alarm. “Stephen wished me to assume the burden of the boy's education. He knew that I could do more for him in a worldly way than you, Virginia, and he had tasted the bitterness of a struggle to make a place for himself. To write me, to feel that he must turn to me in his extremity, must have been a blow to his pride. In his letter the awkwardness of his constraint shows itself. The feeling he had for me remained with him to the end.” She knew what he meant, but did not answer him. He went on. “Years ago, Virginia, when Stark took the Landray farm, I made up my mind that some day you should return there. I have had to wait, but recently the farm was sold to me. It's a whim—a fancy, if you will—but I want you to go there and live.” Virginia shook her head.