"Have you done anything more about the new house?" Helen would ask, as she fluttered up to him with a perfunctory kiss. "Not to-day. It's been a busy day in the city. But we'll have a look at the plans presently." And then the plans would be unrolled, and the details once more discussed, and new features added. "I'm tired of this old house," Helen would cry, with pretty petulance. "I don't see the good of being rich if you've got to live here." "And you won't live here much longer. Wait till the war is over, and then you shall take your place with the greatest ladies of the land." And then Helen would blush with pleasure, her light mind inflated with pride, her imagination picturing a bright butterfly flight through all kinds of glittering scenes. Mrs. Masterman, silent as ever, took no part in these conversations. They were to her a source of pain; but to Helen they were the breath of life. In the future she pictured to herself her mother had no part. But she saw herself with singular distinctness moving on a high plane of circumstance and pleasure, and she made it her aim to foster her father's vanity as a means of gratifying her own. "Father's easy enough to manage," she often told herself. And yet there were many occasions when her boast was rudely falsified. Did she never notice the sudden shadow that fell across her father's face? Did she never ask why it was he would angrily sweep the plans of his new house aside, crying that, maybe, he would never want them after all, and would stalk off in gloomy silence to his own room, where he sat alone until long after the midnight hour had struck? No; she never guessed the cause of these explosions. But her mother did, and trembled. And amid all these aberrations, perhaps the most curious was that his mind appeared to have received a new bias toward religion. There was a certain Sunday evening when Mrs. Masterman surprised him, reading in his office. The house was very still, and he was reading aloud in a grave and solemn voice. He looked up as she entered, and, instead of frowning on her intrusion, motioned her to silence, and went on reading. "Listen to this," he said. "I thought I knew the Bible, but here's something I've never met before. The man that wrote this was a wise fellow.