"Well, Beatty," old Stuart cried, without preliminary effort, "I just can't live without you--that's the whole of it." She smiled. "I ain't much longer to live, and then you're to have it all. So why shouldn't you take what you want now?" He drew out several checks from his pocket-book.
"You can cable your folks at once and go ahead. You've been the best sort of wife, as you said, and--I guess I owe you more'n I've paid for your puttin' up with an old fellow like me all these years."
Mrs. Stuart had a new sensation of pity for his pathetic surrender.
"There's one thing, Beatty," he continued, "so long as I live you'll own I oughter rule in my own house, manage the boys, and that." Mrs. Stuart nodded. "Now I want you to come back with me and break up this party."
"You've made it a bargain, Beatty. You said I was to pay your family what you wanted, and you were to obey me at that price?"
"Well," replied Mrs. Stuart, good-humoredly. "We'll all go up to-morrow. Isn't that early enough?"
"That ain't all, Beatty. You can't make everybody over; you couldn't brush me up much; you can't make a grand lady out of Edith."
"Now you've had your way about your family, and I want you to let Ede alone."
"She doesn't want that Wheelright fellow, and if you think it over you'll see that she couldn't do as you have. She ain't the sort."
Mrs. Stuart twitched at the checks nervously.
"I sort of think Spencer wants her; in fact, he said so coming out here."
"And I told him he could have her, if she wanted him. I don't think I should like to see another woman of mine live the sort of life you have with me. It's hard on 'em." His voice quivered.
Beatrice, Lady Stuart of Winetka, as they called her, stood silently looking out to the lake, reviewing "the sort of life she had lived" from the time she had made up her mind to take the shop-keeper's millions to this moment of concession. It was a grim panorama, and she realized now that it had not meant complete satisfaction to either party. Her twenty or more frozen years made her uncomfortable. While they waited, young Spencer and Miss Stuart came slowly up the terraced bluff.
"Well, John," Mrs. Stuart smiled kindly. "I think this is the last payment,--in full. Let's go down to congratulate them."
