"He spends a great deal of money," she said one day to her lawyer. "I
suppose in the usual ways. But he is not quite like his father. He has
real affections, which his father hadn't. If he marries the right girl
she can make him almost anything."

She had her first inkling that he was interested in Elizabeth Wheeler
one day when the head gardener reported that Mr. Wallace had ordered
certain roses cut and sent to the Wheeler house. She was angry at first,
for the roses were being saved for a dinner party. Then she considered.

"Very well, Phelps," she said. "Do it. And I'll select a plant also, to
go to Mrs. Wheeler."

After all, why not the Wheeler girl? She had been carefully reared, if
the Wheeler house was rather awful in spots, and she was a gentle little
thing; very attractive, too, especially in church. And certainly Wallie
had been seeing a great deal of her.

She went to the greenhouses, and from there upstairs and into the rooms
that she had planned for Wallie and his bride, when the time came. She
was more content than she had been for a long time. She was a lonely
woman, isolated by her very grandeur from the neighborliness she craved;
when she wanted society she had to ask for it, by invitation. Standing
inside the door of the boudoir, her thoughts already at work on
draperies and furniture, she had a vague dream of new young life
stirring in the big house, of no more lonely evenings, of the bustle and
activity of a family again.