It was the last week in December, Christmas week. Brooke and her mother sat opposite each other in the den in a silence that was keeping the brain of each more active than the most rapid speech. Although Adam Lawton had not spoken, the tension that had drawn his face had relaxed, and sensation was slowly returning to his foot, though his right hand was still quite useless. But while he took no apparent notice of what passed about him, his wife felt that his eyes dwelt upon her and followed her when she was in range, and only that morning he had feebly retained the hand she had laid within his upturned left palm. Recovery to a certain extent was possible, the physician proclaimed, with no further jars, and care and quietness; but how to secure this? Quiet is not always the inexpensive thing it seems. But with this new-born hope, everything else seemed unimportant to her. The apparent worst had been carefully explained to them and accepted several days ago, but there had been yet more, for when Brooke had that morning gone to the safety box, where some jewels of her mother’s,—a necklace and other things seldom worn,—and some dozen railroad bonds, the little property that came to her from the Brookes, with some shares of an industrial stock, a birthday gift to Brooke at twenty-one, were stored, the box was empty! Thoughts would come that must not find words even between themselves as they sat there. They both believed in Adam Lawton’s honour and that if he could speak he would explain; and finally, as the tension tightened into agony, Brooke went over to her mother, and kneeling by her said, “Don’t try to think it out now, mother; some day we shall know, and now it is how to live and work until that day comes.” As for Brooke, she had lived five years in those few weeks. Every word that she had ever heard of criticism of those in their present position came back to her, the cruel discussion of Julia Garth at the musicale topping the list. All the various suggestions, practical and problematical, for their future arrayed themselves mockingly in a row before her, but one and all they had their beginning in the separation of the family; not a single plan offered the remotest possibility of keeping it together. That morning, after her finding of the empty box, Brooke had seen Mr. Dean in his office and learned definitely that the only income they could count upon after the new year was the interest upon her shares of stock, six hundred dollars a year—fifty dollars a month; for though the shares themselves were missing, as they stood in her name upon the company’s books, the interest would keep on. Besides this, there would be a fund gathered here and there from articles she or her mother personally owned beyond question—a scant two thousand dollars.