there, the old servants were there to fly to Roger’s side—already far too late. He had been warned of his heart; this was not utterly unexpected. Three days later David wrote a letter to Tom, launched it out into the great world with little hope that he would ever read it. He was the heir, there was a large estate, he must come home. But Tom had never come home. [24] CHAPTER III So there was the story, thought David, rousing himself from his favourite position of leaning forward in his low chair, with his linked hands between his knees, and looking upward at the superb and smiling portrait once more—there was the story to the present day. Flora had guarded her forlorn little sister to the end, ten years ago; had educated Lily’s child, Gabrielle, that same Gabrielle who was to return from years of schooling to-day. Flora’s own splendid child, the beautiful Sylvia, would also be coming home from college one of these days to claim her great inheritance, to be owner and mistress of Wastewater. David himself, finishing college, had had some rather unhappy dull years in business in New York, had gone from the handling of pictures to the painting of pictures, and was now happy in the knowledge that his day as a painter of this same murmuring sea was coming, if not quite come. So there In his thirty-first year, he kept a small studio in New York; his friends, his fellow workers, were there, the galleries and exhibitions were there. But he did much of his painting near Wastewater and had a sort of studio-barn at Keyport, where canvases were stored, and into which he sometimes disappeared for days at a time. Flora regarded him, however coolly and suspiciously, as a son; he was Sylvia’s guardian, he was Roger’s trustee, he advised and counselled the mother[25] and daughter in everything they did. And then—he added this fact with a rather rueful smile to all the other facts of his life—he had always loved Sylvia, from the days of her imperious babyhood. He had gone from a big-brotherly adoration to a more definite thing; she knew it—trust Sylvia!—although he had never told her. [25] Aunt Flora knew it, too, or at least suspected it, but then it was natural to Aunt Flora to suppose all the world in love with her splendid child. Sylvia was just twenty; give her
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