From the Housetops | Page 4

"She must see me," he shouted. "If not to-day, to-morrow; if not then,
some other day, for, by the Eternal, Mrs. Tresslyn, I intend to speak
with her if I have to wait until the accursed day you have selected,--at
the very altar, if necessary. She shall not go into this thing until she has
had the final word with me, and I with her. She does not know what she
is doing. She is carried away by the thought of all that money--Money!
Good God, Mrs. Tresslyn, she has told me a hundred times that she
would marry me if I were as poor as the raggedest beggar in the streets.
She loves me, she cannot play this vile trick on me. Her heart is pure.
You cannot make me believe that she isn't honest and fair and loyal. I
tell you now, once and for all, that I will not stand idly by and see this
vile sacrifice made in order to--"
"Rawson," interrupted Mrs. Tresslyn, looking beyond him in the
direction of the door, "Doctor Thorpe is going. Will you give him his
hat and coat?" She had pressed a button beside the mantelpiece, and in
response to the call, the butler stood in the doorway. "Good day,
Braden. I am sorry that Anne is unable to see you to-day. She--"
"Good day, Mrs. Tresslyn," he choked out, controlling himself with an
effort. "Will you tell her that I shall call to-morrow?"
She smiled. "When do you expect to return to London? I had hoped to
have you stay until after the wedding."
His smile was more of an effort than hers. "Thanks. My grandfather has

expressed the same hope. He says the affair will not be complete
without my presence at the feast. To-morrow, at this hour, I shall come
to see Anne. Thank you, Rawson."
CHAPTER II
His gaze swept the long, luxurious drawing-room, now filled with the
shadows of late afternoon. A sigh that ended in an unvoiced
imprecation escaped him. There was not an object in the room that did
not possess for him a peculiar claim of intimacy. Here he had dreamed
of paradise with Anne, and here he had built upon his hopes,--a staunch
future that demanded little of the imagination. He could never forget
this room and all that it had held for him.
But now, in that brief, swift glance, he found himself estimating the
cost of all the treasures that it contained, and the price that was to be
paid in order that they might not be threatened. These things
represented greed. They had always represented greed. They had been
saved out of the wreck that befell the Tresslyn fortunes when Anne was
a young girl entering her teens, the wreck that destroyed Arthur
Tresslyn and left his widow with barely enough to sustain herself and
children through the years that intervened between the then and the
now.
He recalled that after the wreck had been cleared up, Mrs. Tresslyn had
a paltry twenty-five thousand a year on which to maintain the house
that, fortuitously, had been in her name at the time of the smash. A
paltry sum indeed! Barely enough to feed and clothe one hundred less
exacting families for a year; families, however, with wheelbarrows
instead of automobiles, and with children instead of servants.
Ten years had elapsed since the death of Arthur Tresslyn, and still the
house in the east Seventies held itself above water by means of that
meagre two thousand a month! These rare, almost priceless objects
upon which he now gazed had weathered the storm, proof against the
temptations that beset an owner embarrassed by their richness; they had
maintained a smug relationship to harmony in spite of the jangling of

discordant instruments, such as writs and attachments and the wails of
insufferable creditors who made the usual mistake of thinking that a
man's home is his castle and therefore an object of reprisal. The
splendid porcelains, the incomparable tapestries and the small but
exquisite paintings remained where they had been placed by the
amiable but futile Arthur, and all the king's men and all the king's
horses could not have removed them without Mrs. Tresslyn's sanction.
The mistress of the house subsisted as best she could on the pitiful
income from a sequestered half-million, and lived in splendour among
objects that deluded even the richest and most arrogant of her friends
into believing that nothing was more remote from her understanding
than the word poverty, or the equally disgusting word thrift.
Here he had come to children's parties in days when he was a lad and
Anne a child of twelve, and here he had always been a welcome visitor
and playmate, even to the end of his college years. The motherless,