This led him to one of the long windows. He stopped and
looked out through it across the sloping lawns which surrounded the
house. A low ribbon of glow hung over the edge of the hills which lay to
the west of the town. Silhouetted against it was the ragged line of
roofs and stacks which were the Forsyth Mills. Familiar with them
through years of business association, the little man of law visualized
them now as clearly as though they did not lay wrapped in evening
shadow; he saw the ugly, age-old walls, the glaring brick of the new
additions, the dingy yards, the silver thread of the river and across
that the rows upon rows of tiny houses piled against one another, each
like its neighbor even to the broken pickets surrounding squares of
cinder ground. He knew, although his eyes could not see, that these
yards even now were hung with the lines of everlasting washing, that men
lounged on those back doorsteps and smoked and talked while women worked
within preparing the evening meals. These human beings were machines in
the gigantic industry upon which the House of Forsyth was founded. Did
Madame ever think of them as flesh and blood mortals--like herself?
Cornelius Allendyce smiled at the question; oh, no, the Forsyth
tradition, of which Madame talked, built an impenetrable wall between
her and those toilers.
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