Toward the end of their wedding journey, over some slight misunderstanding at a hotel, Nannie had given way to a hysterical fit of passion that amazed and dismayed her husband, but this was nothing compared with the scene when she discovered that she was pregnant. Tears, screams, striking Arthur in the face, with threats of killing herself, him, and the child were only the beginnings of the drama. However, Arthur had by this time begun to perfect his attitude of non-reaction to the stimuli she employed, and went to his office unworried. Nannie afterward in a thousand ways suggested that the coming of the child was in the nature of a crime and a calamity, and that Arthur was to blame for it. Nannie’s father died a month before her confinement and she even implied that Arthur was responsible for this coincidence. To add to her sense of disappointment and injury Mr. Merwent senior, who had been ill for some time, died also, leaving an involved estate, and the hope that Nannie had secretly treasured of inheriting his money died with him. Arthur’s future, from the Lockhart standpoint, had ceased to be. Mrs. Lockhart, calling to ascertain the truth of the rumor already circulated by gossiping neighbors, met Nannie’s tearful announcement with, “I always thought so!” and when Arthur entered the house a few moments later, she greeted him with marked coldness. After her mother’s departure Nannie turned on him with fresh reproaches. “Now we are penniless and you don’t seem to care!” she exclaimed. Arthur did not reply. “I seem to be the only one who ever thinks about the baby’s future. You haven’t opened your mouth since we got the letter!” Arthur took out a cigar and lighted it. “O--oh! _Why_ don’t you say something? I’ll go crazy!” she almost screamed. “I don’t see just what there is to say,” Arthur answered quietly, and left the room. Nannie’s bitterness was accentuated by the fact that Arthur could not afford to buy the Lockhart residence which had to be sold to clear her own father’s estate, and she was forced to see the property pass into the hands of “Cousin Minnie Sheldon” whom she cordially hated. The spirit of rivalry between Nannie and her cousin, the fruit of a childhood antipathy, had reached its climax in a contest for the affections of the well-to-do young business man who afterward became Minnie’s husband, and when he and his wife took formal possession of Nannie’s ancestral home she felt it as the cruel affirmation of her first defeat. Mrs. Lockhart, who on previous occasions had not hesitated to express her own disapproval of “Cousin Minnie,” after feeble and unconvincing protestations to the effect that she did not wish to inconvenience her prosperous relatives, accepted a grudging offer which allowed her to remain in the old place on the bounty of its new owner.