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and she would, she said, see if the mistress of the house might speak with her.
    â€œBut it is the master with whom I wish to speak . . . .” the girl said in a softer voice.
3.
    Surely it was an error. A miscopying in a document. Attributable to a clerk, or a secretary, or one of the junior attorneys, that he, Maynard Stirling, should— die ?
    Though the firm of Stirling, Stirling & Pedrick dealt daily in the anticipation of, the fact of, and the consequences of death among their clients, and though Maynard Stirling had years ago drawn up his will, as a responsible head of a household and a professional man of some accomplishment, it had never been very real to him except as a theoretical proposition: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But was that not mere metaphor, a poet’s turn of phrase?
    And to “die” at such an ordinary, inauspicious, and inglorious moment: on a weekday morning, in the midst of the devising of a codicil of tedious complexity, in the eleventh month of contract negotiations in whichStirling, Stirling & Pedrick (representing a Chautauqua manufacturer of enormous wealth, one of the founders of the National Association of Manufacturers) were locking horns with their old rivals Bagot, Bushy & Greene (representing downstate copper-mining interests); in the midst of uttering a single choked Latin term—was it pro tempore? —it became the essence of his life to articulate, as if, in the midst of an attack of angina pectoris that threw him forward onto the conference table, and was to kill him within a few hours, he might yet save himself, save all of the universe, by successfully uttering pro tempore.
    But he failed. Ignobly, choking and writhing in agony, he failed. Exactly as if he, Maynard Stirling, were not one of the most prominent attorneys in upstate New York.
    What was Mr. Stirling trying to say, so desperately?
    A message to his family, I think.
    No, surely it was a prayer. A prayer to God, to save his soul.
    At the time of his sudden death Maynard Stirling presented a striking figure to the world: solidly built yet not portly; with a solid moon of a head about which his hair, faded to a silvery hue, seemed to float; close-set, hooded eyes both kindly and shrewd. He was one of those gentlemen in whom life throbbed quick and urgent in his breast, for he knew, and had always known, who he was; and the nature of his mission on earth, as a devout Christian (he was a deacon in the First Presbyterian Church of Contracoeur), and a member of the hallowed legal profession (like his father and grandfather before him). He was an ardent Republican who yet believed, with ex-president Teddy Roosevelt, that the alarming spread of Socialism at the present time was the result of the “purblind folly of the very rich”; though, in general, Mr. Stirling was obliged to represent the rich, and to profit from his association, he did not shrink from voicing certain moderate views . . . of course condemning Socialism as the enemy, if it came to outright war. Above all he was a devoted husband and father, a loyal friend, a man of impeccable good manners and probity and Godhad always seemed to favor him and . . . surely it must be an error, that he should die? stricken in the midst of a mere codicil? and in the very prime of his life, in his fifty-third year?
    A life of matchless integrity. Yet there was to be, kept secret by his family, something distressing . . . mysterious . . . a hint of . . . what, precisely? . . . which came, not exactly to light, then to a sort of miasmic glimmer on the very morning of Mr. Stirling’s funeral, delivered by the postman amid a stack of condolence cards:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  M r STIRLING please do not be angry again with yr. Mina that she has disobeyed one of yr. comands—but I am so fearfull of late I am SO FEARFUL of a change in me I dare not reveal to my Aunt & MUST SPEAK WITH YOU SOON. O PLEASE do not be angry at my weakness for I