She watched him as he went to a window and, catching at the crossrail, stood staring out while he recovered himself. For a few moments, he seemed not to be seeing but simply to be staring. Then he jerked straight, and Ethel knew that he had begun to see and that what he saw was the Rock, gaunt and glistening in the last rays of the declining sun.
Her grandfather slowly turned about, his lips moving in words to himself; then he advanced toward her and said aloud:
"You want about two hundred thousand dollars immediately?"
He had dropped both the boasting of the moment before and the taunting tone of his first questions. Ethel did not understand this quiet statement.
"One hundred and eighty-five thousand is the total I put down as necessary now, grandfather," she said.
"Practically two hundred thousand; call it that," he corrected generously. "Well—well, it may be managed. It may be managed." He was attempting to reproduce, now, the indulgent manner he used to take with her long ago when she was a little girl and came to him for dimes and quarters and half dollars for children's trinkets. "Of course, if we toss that in," he continued, "we must be prepared to toss more after it. Everything must be seen through. And that will run into money—into something like money." He had halted over his desk and had picked up the paper of her totals again and was looking at them.
"But the properties, if developed, will be worth more," Ethel said.
"Maybe. Maybe. At least you think so. Well; well, my dear, I'll think it over carefully." He folded the papers and put out his hand for the others which
