Judge Cahill drew his chair a trifle nearer the fire and the tall, muscular young man who was with him, and who bore so striking a resemblance to him as to be unmistakably his son, dropped into one opposite. They had finished their late dinner and were on the way to the library, but the elder man had paused before the big chimney-piece, standing meditatively for a few moments, and had finally seated himself comfortably and evidently with no immediate intention of proceeding to the library beyond. “The whole arrangement is just what I have planned and hoped for all my life,” he said at length, with a bright look at the young man opposite. “And we have a capital chance of talking it over together to-night. It is rather lucky that your aunt is away for a few days, Dana. Your sister will be delighted. You must write to her at once that it is _un fait accompli_ and that she must leave college for over Sunday and come in and celebrate with us!” “Oh! it will doubtless seem a mere trifle to Louise in comparison with her own arduous duties and tasks,” responded young Cahill, laughing a little and offering a cigar to his father, who refused it with a slight shake of his fine, white head. “If you don’t mind, I’ll smoke one,” he said, lighting his own. “Oh! I don’t mind at all,” said the elder man; and then absently and sadly, as he pushed the thick, silvery hair back from his forehead with a quick decisive motion habitual with him: “I wish your mother could have lived to see this, Dana!” The younger man made an inarticulate murmur of assent and regret, and then they both sat silent, staring into the crackling logs, while the butler moved noiselessly about, putting a decanter and glasses on the table and turning down the lamp a bit and folding back the screen. The younger man was making a rather unsuccessful attempt to recall his mother. He remembered her vaguely as a boy of eight remembers, and she had always seemed to him rather like some beautiful woman of whom he had read than his own mother; and the portrait of her in the drawing-room, although he could recall every feature, every line of it, was like the picture of any other beautiful woman he might have seen in a gallery abroad or the year’s Academy. At last he looked up, and shaking the ash from his cigar, said, with rather an effort-- “You have been most kind, sir. I scarcely think I deserve so much at your hands. I shall try to be all you wish.”