Albans,
but to a remote acquaintance with the character and methods of Mrs.
Harmon, with whom the Sewells had once boarded. She was then freshly
widowed by the loss of her first husband, and had launched her
earliest boarding-house on that sea of disaster, where she had
buoyantly outridden every storm and had floated triumphantly on the
top of every ingulfing wave. They recalled the difficult navigation
of that primitive craft, in which each of the boarders had taken a
hand at the helm, and their reminiscences of her financial
embarrassments were mixed with those of the unfailing serenity that
seemed not to know defeat, and with fond memories of her goodness of
heart, and her ideal devotion in any case of sickness or trouble.
"I should think the prosperity of Mrs. Harmon would convince the
most negative of agnostics that there was an overruling Providence,
if nothing else did," said Sewell. "It's so defiant of all law, so
delightfully independent of causation."
"Well, let Barker alone with her, then," said his wife, rising to
leave him to the hours of late reading which she had never been able
to break up.
XVIII.
After agreeing with his wife that he had better leave Barker alone,
Sewell did not feel easy in doing so. He had that ten-dollar note
which Miss Vane had given him, and though he did not believe, since
Evans had reported Barker's refusal of his fee, that the boy would
take it, he was still constrained to do something with it.
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