"Oh, very well; I expect to be at the office to-morrow. This Commission for the Exposition takes a great deal of my time and energy just now." (It was the year before the great Fair, and Mr. Dround was one of the Commissioners for that enterprise.) "But we will take up your plans at once," he concluded graciously, giving me his hand. * * * * * There was a family party at my house that evening. Will had arrived from Texas, where he had been to look over the field for me, and May was visiting us with her children. As I walked up the path to the house on my return from Mr. Dround's, I could hear Sarah's low laugh. She and May were rocking back and forth behind the vines of the piazza, watching the children at their supper. May was looking almost plump and had a pleasant flush on either cheek; for good times had made her blossom out. But Sarah was the handsomer woman, with her wavy, rich brown hair and soft profile. Instead of May's prim little mouth, her lips were always half open, ready to smile. As I kissed her, she exclaimed:-- "Where have you been, Van?" "Seeing some one." "I know," she said with a pout. "You have been with that horrid Irishman. Well, I hope you made him give you just loads of money." "But suppose I haven't been to see John?" I asked laughingly, thinking she would be delighted to find out I was to keep on with Dround. "Suppose I took your advice?" "What! Are you going to stay with Mr. Dround, after all? And all that money you were telling me about--millions!" she drawled in her soft voice like a disappointed child. She seemed troubled to know that after all I had given up my chance to make money with Strauss and Carmichael. "I guess we shan't starve, Sarah," I laughed back. "You must do what you think best," she said finally, and repeated her favorite maxim, "I don't believe in a woman's interfering in a man's business." After supper, as we sat out in the warm night, Will talked of his trip through the Southwest. "It's a mighty big country down there, and not touched. You folks up North here haven't begun to see what is coming to that country. It's the new promised land!" And he went raving on in the style I love to hear, with the sunshine of great lands on his face and the wind from the prairies blowing low in his voice. It was like music that set my thoughts in flow, and I began to see my scheme unfold, stretch out, embrace this new fertile country, reach on to foreign shores.... Then my thoughts went back to the garden by the lake, with the piece of yellow marble in the wall. "That's a pretty little place the Drounds have behind their house," I remarked vaguely to Sarah in a pause of Will's enthusiasm. "What were you doing in the Drounds' garden?" Sarah asked quickly. "Oh, talking business!" "It's a queer place to talk business." "It's a pretty place, and there's a piece of marble in the wall they got in Italy--Siena, or some such place."