Then Edith turned and went swiftly to the spot, and, touched by the trembling voice and the tired, white face, which had grown so old, forgot everything for a moment, and winding her arms around her mother’s neck, kissed her lovingly, and then leading her to her own room, shut the door and sat down to look at her. “You didn’t expect me, I know,” Mrs. Barrett began, in a half defiant, half apologetic tone; “and perhaps I did wrong to come; but I was so tired of living alone, with nothing to do but think from one day to another; and then I wanted so much to see you, in the handsome home I got for you. A mother has a right to visit her child, you know.” This she said because of the expression on Edith’s face, which she could not understand any more than she could realize that the refined, elegant woman clad in velvet and ermine was her daughter,—her own flesh and blood. Edith had grown far away from her mother, and there was scarcely a sentiment in common between them. Still she wished to do right, and when her mother said what she did, she replied: “Yes, certainly, you have a right; and I am——” She did not get any further, for the voice which made her start as it said: “Edith, my dear, whose is all that remarkable-looking baggage down in the hall which I stumbled over just now?” Colonel Schuyler had ridden round to the stable, and giving his horse to the care of the groom, had entered the house through the side hall, where Mrs. Barrett’s numerous boxes and bundles had been deposited by the express man, who, as the lady was not in sight, made a little charge against the colonel for bringing it from the station. Mrs. Barrett believed in having things secure, and in addition to locks and hasps had tied her boxes with cords and ropes, which, with the marks of age and travel, gave them a “remarkable appearance” indeed, and the colonel stumbled over them and struck his ankle against the sharp corner of one of them, and he was suffering from the pain when he put the question to his wife, without a thought that the obnoxious baggage was part and parcel of his mother-in-law, who sat a little in the shadow, and whom he did not see till Edith said to him: “Why, it must be _mother’s_ baggage. I did not know it was here. Howard, see! here’s mother!—come all the way from England!” Edith was as near hysterical as she well could be and not break down entirely, while the colonel was Confounded, and amazed, and indignant, altogether. When he knocked his ankle against the box and saw the bits of rope, he had thought of the Lyles, and wondered if it could be they were claiming relationship so soon; and now it was even worse than the Lyles,—it was a mother-in-law whom he did not like, and to whom he had sent larger sums of money every year for the sake of keeping her where he wished her to remain. But she was here in his house, and had evidently come to stay, and he must not be rude to her for Edith’s sake; so he made a great effort to be civil, and said: