Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/141

Rh habits and wandering aims; nevertheless, a youth of generosity and kindly impulses. The boy was a source of ceaseless vexation to his mother.

Carpenter, Lomax, & Dalton were her solicitors; especially Robert Dalton, in whom she reposed the greatest confidence, and not infrequently she spoke to him at great length of her difficulties with her son, and usually concluded by working herself into a towering rage.

When one morning in the early autumn it was announced that Gerald Van Bartan was very shortly to wed Miss Columbia Summers, a young lady of great beauty and of aristocratic lineage, but of reduced and nipping finances, the city was very justly indignant. Robert Dalton had for many years paid court to this young woman, and the self-constituted match-makers had long since entered up their decree in this matter and dismissed it, and they resented, as almost a personal affront, the going afield of their plans.

Thereupon idle folk prattled of the great blow to Dalton, his broken heart, and other drivel. There was no evidence that Robert