Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/160

 *certain, if possible, whether Trafford had approached either of the persons interested and if so, what he had done.

It was the day on which Trafford returned from his fruitless visit to the logging drives. Charles Matthewson, uneasy and anxious, found his office more conducive to nervousness than work, and finally, throwing down his pen, had reached for his hat for a turn out of doors, when the door opened and his mother entered.

"Why, mother," he said, rising to meet her, and striving to stifle the apprehension her presence brought, "this is an unusual honour. It's a pleasure I would not deny myself, yet I would have spared you the trouble if you had sent for me."

"I came to talk with you, Charles," she said, as she took the proffered chair by the window; "and it was better and easier to talk here than at home."

"It is a matter of moment, mother?" he asked anxiously.

Endowed though Charles Matthewson was with that relentless persistence, that knows no conscience save success in the pursuit of a purpose, which had