Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/320

288 will appreciate, I believe, why we have preferred to let the other impression go uncorrected. For the second Mrs. Axton so carefully and completely cut off all possibility of any of the property being transferred in any form to the son, that Miss Waldron, when she went to a lawyer to see how she could transfer it to Howard Axton, as soon as she had come into the estate, found that her mother's lawyers had provided against every possibility except that of the heir marrying the disinherited son. So she sent for him, offering to establish him into his estate, even at that cost."

"You mean that you offered to marry him?" Trant questioned the girl directly again. "And he has come to gain his estate in that way?"

"Yes, Mr. Trant; but you must be fair to Mr. Axton also," the girl replied. "When I first wrote him, almost a year ago, he refused point blank to consider such an offer. In spite of my repeated letters it was not till six weeks ago, after a shipwreck in which he lost his friend who had been traveling with him for some years, that he would consent even to come home. Even now I—I remain the one urging the marriage."

The psychologist looked at the girl keenly and questioningly.

"I need scarcely say how little urging he would need, entirely apart from the property," Caryl flushed, "if he were not gentleman enough to appreciate—partly, at least—Miss Waldron's position. I—her friends, I mean, Mr. Trant—have admitted that he appeared at first well enough in every way to permit