Alexina left the window and re-read the postscript of her letter. "In any case I shall not trouble you long. It is my lungs, they tell me. It is a curious sensation, may you never know it, having your furniture seized. Le bon Dieu and Celeste have stood between me and much." It was to her uncle after all that Alexina went with the matter that night. He was in the parlour reading and laid down his paper to give attention. The substance of the letter heard, the two perpendicular lines between his brow relaxed, for it was a case of his judgment being justified, and a man likes to feel he has been right. "It is what I expected," he said, "only it has been longer coming. She has her father's people in Washington, she has no claim on you." He lifted his paper. "But--" said Alexina. He lowered it and waited. Her mouth grew set. He always made her stubborn. Fingering the upholstery of his chair, she looked at him, though it took courage to look at Austen Blair under some circumstances. She found herself suddenly disposed to defend her mother. "But if I feel a claim, Uncle Austen? I wanted to tell you I think I ought to write to her to come." "Come where?" asked Austen Blair. To be sure--where could she write her to come? There fell a silence. Then he spoke, and curtly. "In three months you will be of age, a fact which no doubt your mother has remembered. Until then I forbid it; after that it is your affair. In the interim, it has been my intention, and I meant to say as much to you, to make you acquainted with your affairs. I had expected you to live on in my house. Under the conditions you propose you will, of course, make your own arrangements." Alexina, listening, looked at him. One would have said tears were welling. Had he raised his eyes to hers, put out a hand-- But he returned to his paper. Her cheeks blazed, her head went up, and something ran like a vivifying flame over her face. It was a pity Austen did not see her then. He demanded beauty in a woman. He should have seen his young niece angry. Then she turned and went up to her room and wrote her mother to come. But, the letter written, she leaned upon the desk and broke into wild and passionate crying. CHAPTER FIVE Alexina for several years had been made partially acquainted with her affairs. The evening her uncle chose to go over the whole with her, Alexina, in the midst of it, put a hand timidly on his. "I am grateful, Uncle Austen, you know that," she said. The matter of the mother was fresh between them. "I have been paid, as any one else, for my services," he answered. She drew her hand back. The books were a clear record of what had been done year by year. "Cowan Steamboat Mortgage," read Alexina from a page of early entries. "What was that?" "A mortgage held for you on a boat built at the Cowan shipyards." "What was the name of the boat?" Alexina's voice sounded suddenly strained and odd.