Red-Robin

Manor that Harkness should serve tea

kness slipped through the heavy curtains with his tray and interrupted Madame Forsyt

d not rest easier for knowing that the Forsyth fortune

ings, Madame ordered him

r fifty-five years. He grumbled complainingly to Mrs. Budge, the housekeeper, and to Florrie, M

e pitied. "Poor thing, with this curse on the house, who wouldn't have jumps and fidgets? I don't see I'm sure how any of us stand it." But Florrie spoke with

e talking about now,

claimed Mrs. Budge and

saying; "Do you think any child of that-br

. But on my own responsibility I have made investigations and I have ascertained that your husband's nephew has t

take thi

voice. "Exactly," he purred. "Exactly. Gordon i

of an obscu

e, blood is blo

there, her narrow eyes gleaming from her immobile face, her thin lips t

perating the little lawyer out of hi

ne. However, you have it in your power to will otherwise. But let me say this-not as a lawyer but as your friend. You are growi

there is a-child. I wish you to communicate with this child's father-this relative of my husband, and inform him that I will make this child my heir provided he can be brought to Gray Manor at once. He will live for one year here under your guardianship. I will send for Percival Tubbs who, you may remember, tutored my grandson. Doubtless he is old-fogyish but from his long association with our family he knows the Forsyth traditions and what the head of the House of Forsyth should be. He will

plan," murmur

n such a strange voice that Cornelius Allendyce lo

the man. He could not

razy. I am going to run away-to some new place, where, for awhile, no one will know whether I am the rich Madame Christopher Forsyth or the poor Mrs. John Smith. Oh, I shall be quit

mary reserve, "are you not possibly running awa

t the real heart of the

house of Forsyth should be and I would have to send him back. And my heart has been torn e

Allendyce, lifting his eyes from the pate

our commands to the

ly jotting figures and memoranda in a neat, morocco bound note-book, the little m

h family which had come over to Connecticut from England in the early days of its settlement and had left to all the Forsyths to come, not only the beginnings of the Forsyth factory where thread was made by

er? Mr. Allendyce did not in the least desire to dine alone with his client but the Wassumsic Inn was an uninviting place and New York was a three hou

f law visualized them now as clearly as though they did not lay wrapped in evening shadow; he saw the ugly, age-old walls, the glaring brick of the new additions, the dingy yards, the silver thread of the river and across that the rows upon rows of tiny houses piled against one another, each like its neighbor even to the broken pickets surrounding squares of cinder ground. He knew, although his eyes could not see, that these yards even now were hung with the lines o

nderstanding of them and all that had happened to them. And it had been much. Mr. Allendyce himself often spoke of the "curse" of Gray Manor. Christopher Forsyth and Madame had had one son, Christopher Junior. Allendyce could recall the e

pher the Third. The grandfather and grandmother shut themselves away in Gray Manor with the one purp

her had died before that cruel accident on the football field in which the lad had been fatally injured. The brunt of the blow had fallen upon Madame. And after the boy's death, a gloom had settled

her took over the responsibilities of the head of the family, went off to South America where he married a young Spanish girl. And from the moment of that "

satisfaction tabulated the results in his neat little note-book. Charles had died leaving

alor stabbed at the heart of beauty. This Gordon Forsyth had his childhood amid this, lived on the rise and fall of an artist's day-by-day fortune. Now he would be taken f

es when I tell them!" he declared aloud, with a tingle within hi

d quickly. Harkness bowed stiffly. "M

not have known how to come in and say "Let us go out to dinner." There had to be all th

t of his usual composure by catching the suggestion of a twinkle in the Ha