Larry came down the stairway from Hunt's studio in a mood of high elation. Through Hunt's promise of cooperation he had at least made a start in his unformed plan regarding Maggie. Somehow, he'd work out and put across the rest of it.

Then Hunt's prediction of the trouble that might rise through his silence recurred to Larry. Indeed, that was a delicate situation!—containing all kinds of possible disasters for himself as well as for Hunt. He would have to be most watchful, most careful, or he would find himself entangled in worse circumstances than at present.

As he came down into the little back room, his grandmother was sitting over her interminable accounts, each of which represented a little profit to herself, some a little relief to many, some a tragedy to a few; and many of which were in code, for these represented transactions of a character which no pawnshop, particularly one reputed to be a fence, wishes ever to have understood by those presumptive busy-bodies, the police. When Larry had first entered, she had merely given him an unsurprised “good-evening” and permitted him to pass on. But now, as he told her good-night and turned to leave, she said in her thin, monotonous voice:

“Sit down for a minute, Larry. I want to talk to you.”

Larry obeyed. “Yes, grandmother.”

But the Duchess did not at once speak. She held her red-rimmed, unblinking eyes on him steadily. Larry waited patiently. Though she was so composed, so self-contained, Larry knew her well enough to know that what was passing in her mind was something of deep importance, at least to her.

At length she spoke. “You saw Maggie that night you hurried away from here?”

“Yes, grandmother. Have you heard from her since the?—or from Barney or Old Jimmie?”

The Duchess shook her head. “Do you mind telling me what happened that night—and what Maggie's doing?”

Larry told her of the scene in Maggie's suite at the Grantham, told of the plan in which Maggie was involved and of his own added predicament. This last the Duchess seemingly ignored.

“Just about what I supposed she was doing,” she said. “And you tried again to get her to give it up?”

“Yes.”

“And she refused?”

“Yes.” And he added: “Refused more emphatically than before.”

The Duchess studied him a long moment. Then: “You're not trying to make her give that up just because you think she's worth saving. You like her a lot, Larry?”

“I love her,” Larry admitted.

“I'm sorry about that, Larry.” There was real emotion in the old voice now. “I've told you that you're all I've got left. And now that you've at last started right, I want everything to go right with you. Everything! And Maggie will never help things go right with you. Your love for her can only mean misery and misfortune. You can't change her.”

Larry came out with the questions he had asked himself so frequently these last days. “But why did her manner change so when she heard Barney and the others? Why did she help me escape?”

“That was because, deep down, she really loves you. That's the worst part of it: you both love each other.” The Duchess slowly nodded her head. “You both love each other. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't care what you tried to do. But I tell you again you can't change her. She's too sure of herself. She'll always try to make you go her way—and if you don't, you'll never get a smile from her. And because you love each other, I'm afraid you'll give in and go her way. That's what I'm afraid of. Won't you just cut her out of your life, Larry?”

It had been a prodigiously long speech for the Duchess. And Larry realized that the emotion behind it was a thousand times what showed in the thin voice of the bent, gestureless figure.

“For your sake I'm sorry, grandmother. But I can't.”

“Then it's only fair to tell you, Larry,” she said in a more composed tone which expressed a finality of decision, “that if there's ever anything I can do to stop this, I'll do it. For she's bad for you—what with her stiff spirit—and the ideas Old Jimmie has put into her—and the way Old Jimmie has brought her up. I'll stop things if I can.”

Larry made no reply. The Duchess continued looking at him steadily for a long space. He knew she was thinking; and he was wondering what was passing through that shrewd old brain, when she remarked:

“By the way, Larry, I just remembered what you told me of that old Sing Sing friend—Joe Ellison. Have you heard from him recently?”

“He's out, and he's working where I am.”

“Yes? What's he doing?”

“He's working there as a gardener.”

Again she was silent a space, her sunken eyes steady With thought. Then she said:

“From the time he was twenty till he was thirty I knew Joe Ellison well—better than I've ever told you. He knew your mother when she was a girl, Larry. I wish you'd ask him to come in to see me. As soon as he can manage it.”

Larry promised. His grandmother said no more about Maggie, and presently Larry bade her good-night and made his cautious way, ever on the lookout for danger, to where he had left his roadster, and thence safely out to Cedar Crest. But the Duchess sat for hours exactly as he had left her, her accounts unheeded, thinking, thinking, thinking over an utterly impossible possibility that had first presented itself faintly to her several days before. She did not see how the thing could be; and yet somehow it might be, for many a strange thing did happen in this border world where for so long she had lived. When finally she went to bed she slept little; her busy conjectures would not permit sleep. And though the next day she went about her shop seemingly as usual, she was still thinking.

That night Joe Ellison came. They met as though they had last seen each other but yesterday.

“Good-evening, Joe.”

“Glad to see you, Duchess.”

She held out to him a box of the best cigars, which she had bought against his coming, for she had remembered Joe Ellison's once fastidious taste regarding tobacco. He lit one, and they fell into the easy silence of old friends, taking up their friendship exactly where it had been broken off. As a matter of fact, Joe Ellison might have been her son-in-law but for her own firm attitude. He had known her daughter very much better than her words to Larry the previous evening had indicated. Not only had Joe known her while a girl down here, but much later he had learned in what convent she was going to school and there had been surreptitious love-making despite convent rules and boundaries—till the Duchess had learned what was going on. She had had a square out-and-out talk with Joe; the romance had suddenly ended; and later Larry's mother had married elsewhere. But the snuffed-out romance had made no difference in the friendship between the Duchess and Joe; each had recognized the other as square, as that word was understood in their border world.

To Joe Ellison the Duchess was changed but little since twenty-odd years ago. She had seemed old even then; though as a youth he had known old men who had talked of her beauty when a young woman and of how she had queened it among the reckless spirits of that far time. But to the Duchess the change in Joe Ellison was astounding. She had last seen him in his middle thirties: black-haired, handsome, careful of dress, powerful of physique, dominant, fiery-tempered, fearless of any living thing, but with these hot qualities checked into a surface appearance of unruffled equanimity by his self-control and his habitual reticence. And now to see him thin, white-haired, bent, his old fire seemingly burned to gray ashes—the Duchess, who had seen much in her generations, was almost appalled at the transformation.

At first the Duchess skillfully guided the talk among commonplaces.

“Larry tells me you're out with him.”

“Yes,” said Joe. “Larry's been a mighty good pal.”

“What're you going to do when you get back your strength?”

“The same as I'm doing now—if they'll let me.”

And after a pause: “Perhaps later, if I had the necessary capital, I'd like to start a little nursery. Or else grow flowers for the market.”

“Not going back to the old thing, then?”

Joe shook his white head. “I'm all through there. Flowers are a more interesting proposition.”

“Whenever you get ready to start, Joe, you can have all the capital you want from me. And it will cost you nothing. Or if you'd rather pay, it'll cost you the same as at a bank—six per cent.”

“Thanks. I'll remember.” Joe Ellison could not have spoken his gratitude more strongly.

The Duchess now carefully guided the talk in the direction of the thing of which she had thought so constantly.

“By the way, Joe, Larry told me something about you I'd never heard before—that you had been married, and had a child.”

“Yes. You didn't hear because I wasn't telling anybody about it when it happened, and it never came out.”

“Mind telling me about it, Joe?”

He pulled at his perfecto while assembling his facts; and then he made one of the longest speeches Joe Ellison—“Silent Joe” some of his friends had called him in the old days—was ever known to utter. But there was reason for its length; it was an epitome of the most important period of his life.

“I had a nice little country place over in Jersey for three or four years. It all happened there. No one knew me for what I was; they took me for what I pretended to be, a small capitalist whose interests required his taking occasional trips. Nice neighbors. That's where I met my wife. She was fine every way. That's why I kept all that part of my life from my pals; I was afraid they might leak and the truth would spoil everything. My wife was an orphan, niece of the widow of a broker who lived out there. She never knew the truth about me. She died when ............