expression—for Jessica Holme was blind. As the crisp deliberate accent pointed the judicial period, as with a subterranean echo of irrefutable condemnation, Harry saw her under lip indrawn, her hands clasp tightly, then unclasp in her lap. Pliant, graceful hands, he thought, which even blindness could not make maladroit. In the chapel porch stood the figure of an angel which she had modelled solely by the wonderful touch in the finger-tips.

"Go on," rasped the old man.

"The residue of my estate, real and personal, I do give and bequeath to my ward, Jessica Holme, to be and become—"

He broke off suddenly, for the girl was kneeling by the chair, groping for the restless hand that wandered[Pg 6] on the afghan, and crying in a strained, agitated voice: "No ... no ... you must not! Please, please! I never could bear it!"

[Pg 6]

"Why not?" The old man's irritant query was belligerent. "Why not? What is there for you to bear, I'd like to know!"

"He is your son!"

"In the eyes of the law, yes. But not otherwise!" His voice rose. "What has he done to deserve anything from me? What has he had all his life but kindness? And how has he repaid it? By being a waster and a prodigal. By setting me in contempt, and finally by forsaking me in my old age for his own paths of ribaldry."

The girl shook her head. "You don't know where he is now, or what he is doing. Oh, he was wild and reckless, I have no doubt. But when he quarrelled and left you, wasn't it perhaps because he was too quick-tempered? And if he hasn't come back, isn't it perhaps because he is too proud? Why, he wouldn't be your son if he weren't proud! No matter how sorry he might be, it would make no difference then. I could give him the money you had given me, but I couldn't change the fact. You, his own father, would have disowned him, disinherited him, taken away his birthright!"

"And richly he'd deserve it!" he snapped, his bent[Pg 7] fingers plucking angrily at the wool of the afghan. "He doesn't want a father or a home. He wants his own way and a freedom that is license! I know him. You don't; you never saw him."

[Pg 7]

"I never saw you either," she said, a little sadly.

"Come," he answered a shade more gently. "I didn't mean your eyes, my dear! I mean that you 

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