“Oh, I’m going to do it all right!” Shepherd replied jauntily. He greatly wished her to think him possessed of the courage and initiative to carry through large projects no matter how formidable the opposition. CHAPTER FOURTEEN I Franklin Mills was now on better terms with himself than at any time since Bruce Storrs’s appearance in town. Open weather had made it possible for him to go to Deer Trail once or twice a week for a ride, and he walked several miles every day. Leila had agreed to accompany him on a trip to Bermuda the first of February. In his absence the machinery he had set in motion would be projecting the Hardens a little further into the social limelight without his appearing to be concerned in it. He was hoping that the trip would serve effectually to break off Thomas’s attentions to Leila, and that within the next year he would see her engaged to Carroll. Leila couldn’t be driven; to attempt to force the thing would be disastrous. But the thought of her marrying Thomas, a divorced man, was abhorrent, while Carroll was in all ways acceptable. What Shepherd lacked in force and experience, Carroll would bring into the family. Mills was annoyed that he had ever entertained a thought that he could be denied anything in life that he greatly coveted, or deprived of the comfort and peace he had so long enjoyed. He would prolong his Indian Summer; his last years should be his happiest. He enjoyed the knowledge that he exercised, with so little trouble to himself, a real power in the community. In a directors’ meeting no one spoke with quite his authoritative voice. No other business man in town was so thoroughly informed in finance and economics as he. He viewed the life of his city with the tranquil delight of a biologist who in the quiet of his laboratory studies specimens that have been brought to the slide without any effort on his own part. And Mills liked to see men squirm--silly men who overreached themselves, pretentious upstarts who gestured a great deal with a minimum of accomplishment. Blessed with both brains and money, he derived the keenest satisfaction in screening himself from contact with the vulgar while he participated in the game like an invisible master chess player.... Doctor Lindley had asked him to come in to St. Barnabas to look at the Mills Memorial window, which had been restored with Mills’s money. He stopped on his way to the office a few days before Christmas and found Lindley busy in his study. They went into the church and inspected the window, which was quite as good as new. While they were viewing it Mrs. Torrence came in, her vivacity subdued to the spirit of the place. She was on a committee to provide the Christmas decorations. “You’re just the man I want to see,” she said to Mills. “I was going to call you up. There’s some stuff in your greenhouses I could use if you don’t mind.” “Anything I’ve got! Tell me what you want and I’ll have the people at the farm deliver it.”