Chapter 8 - Page 2

the miserable woman--you could
never know what she'd see in people--an interesting pretext for the
liberality with which her nature overflowed. But even Miss Anvoy
was now quite tired of her. Gravener told me more about the crash
in New York and the annoyance it had been to him, and we also
glanced here and there in other directions; but by the time we got
to Doncaster the principal thing he had let me see was that he was
keeping something back. We stopped at that station, and, at the
carriage-door, some one made a movement to get in. Gravener
uttered a sound of impatience, and I felt sure that but for this I
should have had the secret. Then the intruder, for some reason,
spared us his company; we started afresh, and my hope of a
disclosure returned. My companion held his tongue, however, and I
pretended to go to sleep; in fact I really dozed for
discouragement. When I reopened my eyes he was looking at me with
an injured air. He tossed away with some vivacity the remnant of a
cigarette and then said: "If you're not too sleepy I want to put
you a case." I answered that I'd make every effort to attend, and
welcomed the note of interest when he went on: "As I told you a
while ago, Lady Coxon, poor dear, is demented." His tone had much
behind it--was full of promise. I asked if her ladyship's
misfortune were a trait of her malady or only of her character, and
he pronounced it a product of both. The case he wanted to put to
me was a matter on which it concerned him to have the impression--
the judgement, he might also say--of another person. "I mean of
the average intelligent man, but you see I take what I can get."
There would be the technical, the strictly legal view; then there
would be the way the question would strike a man of the world. He
had lighted another cigarette while he talked, and I saw he was
glad to have it to handle when he brought out at last, with a laugh
slightly artificial: "In fact it's a subject on which Miss Anvoy
and I are pulling different ways."

"And you want me to decide between you? I decide in advance for
Miss Anvoy."

"In advance--that's quite right. That's how I decided when I
proposed to her. But my story will interest you only so far as
your mind isn't made up." Gravener puffed his cigarette a minute
and then continued: "Are you familiar with the idea of the
Endowment of Research?"

"Of Research?" I was at sea a moment.

"I give you Lady Coxon's phrase. She has it on the brain."

"She wishes to endow--?"

"Some earnest and 'loyal' seeker," Gravener said. "It was a
sketchy design of her late husband's, and he handed it on to her;
setting apart in his will a sum of money of which she was to enjoy
the interest for life, but of