The younger man—he was only a boy—grinned impishly at the elder, bringing out the two dimples in his flushed, girlish cheeks.
 
"That's all right enough, Dill," he drawled; he always drawled when he had been drinking. When he was sober the familiar Huntington staccato was very marked in him.
 
"That's all right, Dilly, my boy, and a grand truth, as old Jim used to tell us at chapel, but maybe little Robert doesn't see your game? Oh, yes, he sees it, fast enough. Sis hands it out to you, and you recite it to Robbie, and Robbie reforms, and you get Sis! How's that for a young fellow who flunks his math? Not bad, eh?"
 
Dillon flushed and set his teeth, mastering an almost irresistible longing to slap those red cheeks in vicious alternation. To think that this chattering young idiot stood between him and his heart's desire!
 
Bob drawled on: "Anyhow, Dill, I think it's[130] right queer, you know. Why don't she marry you? She can't love you very much, if it depends on me. You're a man o' the world, you know, man o' world"—he grew absent-minded and stared at the wall. Dillon snapped his fingers nervously, and the speaker began again with a start:
 
"That's what I say—a man o' world. Tell her it's all bosh worryin' over me, tell her that, Dill, tell her I say so. No use her tryin' to be my mother. Now is there, Dill, as a man, is there? If she got married and had some children of her own——"
 
"Bob," the older man burst out, "for heaven's sake, shut up, will you, and listen to me! I'm going to tell you the truth. You've got the whole thing in your hands—God knows why, but you have—and I'm going to lay it before you once for all. Then do as you please: make us all happy, or go to the devil your own way—and I'll go mine," he added, lower and quicker.
 
Bob sat up, blinked rapidly, and smoothed his hair down tight over his ears—sure sign that he was nearly himself.
 
"Go ahead," he said shortly, "I'll come in."
 
[131] Dillon bit his lip a moment; he would rather have taken a whipping than say what he had to say. The clock ticked loud in the pause, and Bob, every moment clearer-eyed, heavy sleep a thing of the past, stared at him disconcertingly.
 
"What I'm going to say to you," Dillon began, "isn't very often said by one man to another, I imagine. Few men are placed in just my position. I've known you all so well, I've seen so much of you all my life——" he paused.
 
"I needn't say how much I thought of your mother. When your father was—when he broke down so often at the last, of course I saw a great deal of her, and she trusted me a lot—she had to, once she began. When she died, and you weren't there, because you——"
 
"Don't! please don't, Dill!" the boy's lips contracted; his slim body twisted with a helpless remorse.
 
"Well, then, when she died she asked me to look out for you, because she knew how I loved her and—and Helena. She knew you had it in you, and she didn't blame you—they never do, I suppose,[132] mothers—but she asked me if I'd try to look out for you. She knew I wasn't perfect myself. That's—that's why she thought I wouldn't do for Helena. Helena was always so wonderful, so high above——"
 
Again he stopped, and the boy's voice broke in:
 
"Helena's made of snow and ice-water," he said moodily, "she's too good for this earth. She doesn't know——"
 
"She knows what her brother should be, and she knows what her husband must be," Dillon interrupted sternly. "No sister could have been more of an angel to you, Bob.
 
"Now I'll go on. It's going to be necessary just here for me to tell you that I love your sister. You don't know anything about that, of course. You don't for a second of your life realise what it is to love a woman as I've loved her for—for five years, we'll say. I put it five because, though I loved her long before, things happened in between, and I don't count it till five years ago. Heaven knows I'm not worth her shoe-laces. Once or twice—before the five years—I've realised that[133] a little too much, and then—the things happened. But since then I've honestly tried to keep to the mark your mother set me. She said to me once, 'If you would only keep as good as you are at your best, Lawrence, you'd be good enough for Helena,' and—perhaps because that wasn't so very good, after all—I've really been keeping there, after a fashion."
 
Bob stared at him in unaffected amazement. This clubman, this elegant, this social arbiter was standing before him with tears in his level grey eyes. It dawned upon his reckless young soul that the soul of another man was slowly and painfully stripping itself before him.
 
"We'll let that part of it go," Dillon went on hurriedly, "you couldn't see. I—I think I could make her happy, Bob. I know her better than she thinks. She almost said she'd have me, and then you went on that spree. You nearly broke her heart—I needn't go over it. Only she made a vow, then—it was when she went into that convent-place in Holy Week, and she's never been the same since—and it was about you."
 
[134] "About me? What d'you mean?"
 
"She told me she never could marry till she was certain whether you were just obstinate and wild, or—or like your father; and that in that case——"
 
"What, in that case?" Bob muttered through his teeth.
 
"She was going to devote her life to taking care of you."
 
There was a silence.
 
"There's no use in going over all the arguments now, Bob—you know what the doctor said. Three months without a drop, and then he'd warrant you. Every day that goes by makes it harder for you. And here's your Uncle Owen promising that the first month you go without a spree he'll send you for a three months' cruise on the yacht with Stebbins—you know what a chance that is."
 
Bob looked fairly up for the first time.
 
"Stebbins! Would Stebbins go? I don't believe you!" he cried eagerly.
 
"He told me he would," said Dillon.
 
"Why on earth should he?"
 
[135] "He's a friend of mine," the other answered simply.
 
Bob twisted his lips together a moment, while the muscles around his mouth worked. Suddenly he gave way and broke into sobbing speech.
 
"You're a good fellow, Dill—I'm not worth it—truly, I'm not! I've been a beast—and the college and all that—you all despise me—but so do I!"
 
He gripped the chair, turning his handsome, tear-stained face up to his friend's. How the straight, thin nose, the black-lashed blue eyes, the white forehead reflected Helena! Dillon could have kissed him for the likeness.
 
"Will you, Bob? Will you? We'll all stand by you!"
 
"I will, Dillon, I will, so help me—Bob!" he smiled through wet lashes. "You hang on, and I will! But look out for that rector—he's running a close second, and Aunt Sarah's backing him for all she's worth!" He was smiling wisely now; the strain was lifted, and he was almost himself again. Dillon scowled.
 
"He takes her slumming, you know, and, say,[136] you ought to hear him give it to Aunt Sarah about knowing the condition the poor devils are in before you deal out the tracts, you know. He wants the good ladies and gentlemen to come and see—that way, you know."
 
"He's right enough there," Dillon said constrainedly, "and I suppose he's better for her than I'd be—no, by George, he's not! Bob, I tell you, I know her better than he does—I tell you I've waited five years—Oh, Lord, I can't talk any more about it!"
 
They went out arm in arm, the boy warm and friendly, proud of his confidence and full of high resolve, Dillon impassive outwardly, but conscious of great stakes. To say, in four short weeks, to those wide, blue eyes, a little scornful, perhaps, but with so sweet, so pure a scorn! "The strain is over: he is safe; can you not trust me now?" His heart leaped and grew large at the thought.
 
It was so like Helena, this service, half-sacred in her mother's trust, half-shy in maidenly delaying. "She is afraid of me!" he thought exultingly—indeed, she admitted as much.
 
[137] "You and your set—one knows you, and yet one doesn't," she said to him. "You seem so still, so satisfied, so sure about life—there seems to be so much you don't tell! Do you see what I mean? It frightens me. There is so much we don't think the same about, Lawrence—so much of you I don't know! I wanted, when I married, to come into a—a peace. I wanted it to be—don't laugh—like my Confirmation: do you think it would, if I married you? Do you, Lawrence?"
 
He turned his head away. A vision of her, those ten short years ago, in white procession down the aisle of Easter lilies, rapt and aloof, flashed before him. For one sweet second he saw her in fancy, again in white, but trembling now, and near him——
 
"Oh, dearest child," he begged, "I don't know about the peace—how can I? The things are so different! But we could be happy—I know we could! Is peace all you want, sweetheart, all?"
 
Caught by his eyes, her own wavered and dropped; a flood of red rose to her hair.
 
"Don't, Lawrence, you frighten me! When you[138] look like that—Oh, wait a month, only this month, Lawrence, till Bob has gone and we're sure!"
 
"You want that more than anything else, don't you? You'd give up anything——"
 
Her eyes grew soft, then stern, and looked clearly into his.
 
"Anything in the world," she said instantly, "so that mamma could see he was—safe. I am all Bob has. Oh, if he can only——"
 
"He shall," Dillon assured her stoutly, "he shall, this time!"
 
And indeed it seemed that he would. He seemed awakened to the strongest effort they had known him to make. His uncle's offer, grimly set for one month from its date, or never, took on for him a superstitious colour of finality. He was convinced that it was his last chance.
 
"If I'm downed this time, Dill, it's all up," he would say, wearily, as they paced the endless city blocks together, arm in arm, under the night. "If I can keep up till the yacht—how long is it, a week?—then, something tells me I'm all right. I swear it's so. I never felt that before. But if I[139] don't"—he paused ominously. "There's always one way out," he added.
 
"You will break Helena's heart, then."
 
"Heart? I don't think she has one. If she had, you'd have had her long ago. Oh, no, I sha'n't. She'll go into that beastly retreat for a while, and then she'll marry that crazy rector-man and go about saving souls. You'll see."
 
The week was nearly up. The yacht was ready in the harbour. The boy, though, showed the strain, and Dillon, fearful of too much dogging him, and warned by his furtive eyes and narrowed lips, called in Stebbins to the rescue.
 
"I can't have him hate me, Steb," he explained. "We're both of us worn pretty thin. If you could give up to-day and to-night——"
 
They shook hands.
 
"It's every minute, practically, you know, Steb," he added doubtfully, "it's a good deal."
 
"Oh, get on!" the other broke in, with a good-natured shoulder clap.
 
As he swung the glass door of the club behind him, Dillon ran down a messenger-boy, bulging[140] with yellow envelopes. The boy glanced at him questioningly.
 
"Mist' Wardwell, Adams, Stebbins, 'r Waite?" he inquired, holding out four telegrams as he slipped in.
 
Dillon shook his head, and walked down the steps.
 
One more night and she would be all to win, no promise between, no scruple that a lover might not smother. Shame on him if he could not woo more persuasively than a mystical evangelist! In the evening he would see her; the precious little note lay warm over his heart.
 
He dined alone, he could not have said where, and an idle impulse for the lights and bustle of the great thoroughfare sent him strolling down Broadway. It was too early for the crowd, and he found himself guessing vaguely as to the characteristics of the couples that met and passed him. That tall, slender lad, for instance, with such a hint of Bob—poor, troublesome Bob!—in his loose, telltale swagger, what had led him to the dark-eyed creature that tapped her high heels be[141]side him? As she came under the light, one saw better; her flashing smile, her careless carriage of the head, her broad sweep of shoulder, had a certain charm—great heavens, it was Bob steadying himself on her arm! A moment, and the familiar drawl reached his ear:
 
"An' so you always want to choose mos' prom'nent place, every time, an' you're safe's a church. No chance to meet y'r dear frien's——"
 
Dillon strode to his side, raising his hat to the surprised woman.
 
"I beg your pardon, Bob, but had you forgotten your engagement this evening?" he said smoothly. Bob stopped, glared a moment uncertainly, but the scrupulous courtesy of Dillon's bearing had its intended effect.
 
"What—what engagement?" he inquired suspiciously. "Friend o' mine," he added to his companion.
 
"Haven't you met Stebbins? He—he was expecting you." Lawrence felt his heart sink. Where was Stebbi............