There was further information I wished to obtain,

and I did not blush to pluck it from Stoddard before

I let him go that night. Olivia Gladys Armstrong lived

in Cincinnati; her father was a wealthy physician at

Walnut Hills. Stoddard knew the family, and I asked

questions about them, their antecedents and place of

residence that were not perhaps impertinent in view of

the fact that I had never consciously set eyes on their

daughter in my life. As I look back upon it now my

information secured at that time, touching the history

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and social position of the Armstrongs of Walnut Hills,

Cincinnati, seems excessive, but the curiosity which the

Reverend Paul Stoddard satisfied with so little trouble

to himself was of immediate interest and importance.

As to the girl in gray I found him far more difficult.

She was Marian Devereux; she was a niece of Sister

Theresa; her home was in New York, with another

aunt, her parents being dead; and she was a frequent

visitor at St. Agatha's.

The wayward Olivia and she were on excellent terms,

and when it seemed wisest for that vivacious youngster

to retire from school at the mid-year recess Miss Devereux

had accompanied her home, ostensibly for a visit,

but really to break the force of the blow. It was a pretty

story, and enhanced my already high opinion of Miss

Devereux, while at the same time I admired the unknown

Olivia Gladys none the less.

When Stoddard left me I dug out of a drawer my

copy of John Marshall Glenarm's will and re-read it for

the first time since Pickering gave it to me in New

York. There was one provision to which I had not

given a single thought, and when I had smoothed the

thin type-written sheets upon the table in my room I

read it over and over again, construing it in a new light

with every reading.

Provided, further, that in the event of the marriage of

said John Glenarm to the said Marian Devereux, or in the

event of any promise or contract of marriage between said

persons within five years from the date of said John Glenarm's

acceptance of the provisions of this will, the whole

estate shall become the property absolutely of St. Agatha's

School at Annandale, Wabana County, Indiana, a corporation

under the laws of said state.

"Bully for the old boy!" I muttered finally, folding

the copy with something akin to reverence for my

grandfather's shrewdness in closing so many doors upon

his heirs. It required no lawyer to interpret this

paragraph. If I could not secure his estate by settling

at Glenarm for a year I was not to gain it by marrying

the alternative heir. Here, clearly, was not one of those

situations so often contrived by novelists, in which the

luckless heir presumptive, cut off without a cent, weds

the pretty cousin who gets the fortune and they live

happily together ever afterward. John Marshall Glenarm

had explicitly provided against any such frustration

of his plans.




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