to all his holdings of every sort; so nominally, as well as actually, she governed stockholders' and directors' meetings and, whenever she cared to, outvoted and humiliated Lucas and his sons. If they did not like her control of family affairs, they had the right to buy her out or they could sell out to her. But they could not buy her out; and they knew the value of their own holdings too well to sell. So they grinned, as best they could, and bore it while they watched Oliver gradually sink into invalidism and year follow year with Agnes childless.
There was an old contract, which Lucas senior had safely locked away in a bank vault and which he inspected from time to time, by which he and his brother had bound themselves—for mutual and perfectly legal compensation in hand and hereby acknowledged—that in the event of either of them or their sons dying without issue, the holdings of the deceased would pass to the survivor. Lucas had hired most capable advice to the effect that, under certain conditions of survivorship, that contract would be enforceable to-day; and at last in the month of September, in the year of our Lord, 1918, those conditions seemed completely fulfilled; for Agnes, who had gone heart and soul into war work and had safely crossed six times through the submarine zone, finally sailed aboard a ship which was torpedoed; and she was lost.
The date of the sinking of the Gallentic was the seventeenth; upon that day Oliver was alive, though in poor health, at his home in Chicago. The news reached him on the eighteenth; on the twentieth he gave up hope for his wife; and on the twenty-second, he died. Now since Agnes, having been thoroughly businesslike, had not taken title to Oliver's possessions
