He was telling her now of Chadwick Champneys and how his coming had changed things. But of the price he had had to pay he said nothing. He tried not to think of the bride his uncle had forced upon him, though her narrowed eyes, her red hair, her mouth set in a hard red line haunted him like a nightmare. His soul revolted against such a mockery of marriage. He could imagine his mother's horror, and he was glad Maria Champneys slept beside the husband of her youth in the cemetery beside the Riverton Road. She wouldn't have asked him to pay such a price, not for all the Champneyses dead and gone! But Chadwick Champneys had held him to his bargain, had forced him to give his name, his father's name, of which his mother had been so proud. Peter smarted with humiliation. It was as if he had been bought and sold, and he writhed under the disgrace of such bondage. He felt the helpless anger of one who realizes he has been shamefully swindled, yet is powerless to redress his injury; and what added insult to injury was that a Champneys, his father's brother, had inflicted it. Yet he had no faintest notion of breaking or even evading his pledged word; such a thought never once occurred to him. He meant to live up to the letter of his bargain; his honor would compel him to fulfil his obligation scrupulously and exactly. "And so my uncle and I came to terms," he told Mrs. Hemingway. And he added conscientiously: "He is very liberal. He insisted upon placing to my credit what he says I'll need, but what seems to me too much. And so here I am," he finished. "Yes, here you are. It had to be," said she, thoughtfully. "It's your fate, Peter." "It had to be. It's my fate," agreed Peter. "And that nice, amusing old colored woman who kept house for you--what became of her?" "Emma? Oh, she wouldn't stay behind, so she came along with me. And she couldn't leave the cat, so he came along, too," said Peter, casually. Mrs. Hemingway laughed as his uncle had laughed. "There's an odd turn to your processes, Peter," she commented. "One sees that _you'll_ never be molded into a human bread pill! I'm glad we've met again. I think you're going to need me. So I'm going to look after you." "I have needed you every day since you left," he told her.