"In 1892, when I married and took my residence here on the lake shore—the house stood where this one stands now—Corvet bought the house on Astor Street. His only reason for doing it was, I believe, his desire to be near me. The neighborhood was what they call fashionable; neither Corvet nor Mrs. Corvet—he had married in 1889—had social ambitions of that sort. Mrs. Corvet came from Detroit; she was of good family there—a strain of French blood in the family; she was a schoolteacher when he married her, and she had made a wonderful wife for him—a good woman, a woman of very high ideals; it was great grief to both of them that they had no children.
"Between 1886, when I first met him, and 1895, Corvet laid the foundation of great success; his boats seemed lucky, men liked to work for him, and he got the best skippers and crews. A Corvet captain boasted of it and, if he had had bad luck on another line, believed his luck changed when he took a Corvet ship; cargoes in Corvet bottoms somehow always reached port; there was a saying that in storm a Corvet ship never asked help; it gave it; certainly in twenty years no Corvet ship had suffered serious disaster. Corvet was not yet rich, but unless accident or undue competition intervened, he was certain to become so. Then something happened."
Sherrill looked away at evident loss how to describe it.
"To the ships?" Alan asked him.
"No; to him. In 1896, for no apparent reason, a great change came over him."
"In 1896!"
"That was the year."
