Joyce's Investments

The old lawyer caressed his smoothly shaven chin and gazed out at Joyce Lavillotte from under his shaggy eyebrows, as from the port-holes of a castle, impressing her as being quite as inscrutable of aspect and almost as belligerent. She, flushed and bright-eyed, leaned forward with an appealing air, opposing the resistless vigor of youth to the impassive-ness of age. "It is not the crazy scheme you think it, Mr. Barrington," she said in that liquid voice which was an inheritance from her creole ancestry, "and I do not mean to risk my last dollar. You know I have means that cannot be touched. Why should you be so sure I cannot manage the Works-especially when Mr. Dalton is so capable and-" The lawyer uttered something between a grunt and a laugh. "It's Mr. Dalton who will manage it all. What do you know of the Works?" "No, he will not, Mr. Barrington. The factory, of course, is his province, but the village shall be mine.