and from the luxurious chair before the fire kindled in the grate an elderly lady arose and advanced a step or two toward the parlor door. In another moment she was kissing the young man bending over her and saluting her as mother, kissing him quietly, properly, as the Camerons always kissed. She was very glad to have Wilford home again, for he was her favorite child, and brushing the raindrops from his coat she led him to the fire, offering him her own easy-chair and starting herself in quest of another. But Wilford held her back, and making her sit down, he drew an ottoman beside her and then asked her first how she had been and then how Jamie was, then where his sisters were, and if his father had come home--for there was a father, the elder Cameron, a quiet, unassuming man, who stayed all day in Wall Street, seldom coming home in time to carve at his own dinner table, and when he was at home, asking for nothing except to be left by his fashionable wife and daughters to himself, free to smoke and doze over his evening paper in the seclusion of his own reading-room. As Wilford's question concerning his sire had been the last one asked, so it was the last one answered, his mother parting his dark hair with her jeweled hand, and telling him first that with the exception of a cold taken at the park on Saturday afternoon when she drove out to try the new carriage, she was in usual health; second, that Jamie was very well, but impatient for his uncle's return; third, that Juno was spending a few days in Orange, and that Bell had gone to pass the night with her particular friend, Mrs. Meredith, the bluest, most bookish woman in New York. "Your father," the lady added, "has not yet returned, but as the dinner is ready I think we will not wait."