The words, concluded by the barely successful suppression of a sob, fell on unprotesting silence. Who but this life-worn woman had so good an opportunity to know if they were true, so good a right to speak them if she believed them true? John looked at his plate, Tayna and Dick looked at each other. It required a stout heart to break the oppressive quiet, and for the moment no one in this group had that heart. The break came from the outside, when some one ran swiftly up the steps and threw open the front door. Instant sounds of collision and confusion issued from the hall, followed immediately by a masculine voice, thin and injured in tone, calling excitedly: "Well, for the love of Michael Angelo! What do you keep stuffing the hall so full of furniture for? Won’t somebody please come and help me with these things?" The dinner table was abruptly deserted; but quick as John and the children were, Rose was ahead of them, and when they reached the hallway, a thin man of medium height, with an aquiline nose, dark eyes, and long loose hair, was helplessly in the embrace of the laughing and crying woman. "Oh, Charles, you did come home; you did come home, didn’t you?" she was crying. Charles broke in volubly. "Well, I should say I did. What did you expect? Have I ever impressed you as a man who would neglect his family?" After which, with the look of one who has put his accusers in the wrong, he rescued himself from his wife’s emphatic embraces, held her off for a moment with a look of real fondness, and then brushed her with his lips, first on one cheek and then upon the other. "Dad-dee!" clamored the children in chorus. "Daddee!" Yet it was noticeable that they did not presume to rush upon their father, but flung their voices before them, experimentally, as it were. "Well, well, _las ninas_" (las ninas being the Spanish for children), the father exclaimed, his piercing dark eyes upon them with delight and displeasure mingling. "Aren’t you going to give me a hug? Your mother nearly strangles me, and you stand off eyeing me as if I were a new species." At the open arms of invitation, both of the children plunged unhesitatingly; but their reception was brief. "Run away now, father is tired," the nervous-looking man proclaimed presently, straightening his shoulders, while he sniffed the atmosphere. "Dinner, eh? Gods and goats, but I am hungry!" Rose led the little procession proudly back to the table, drawing out her husband’s chair for him, hovering over him, smoothing his hair, unfolding his napkin, and stooping to place a fresh kiss upon his fine, high, but narrow brow. "That will do now; that will do now," he chided, with an air of having indulged a foolishly doting woman long enough. "For goodness’ sake, Rose, give me something to eat." His wife, still upon her feet, carried him the platter from which the family had been served. Charles condemned it with a glance.