The dining-room looked a picture of comfort, with the curtains drawn, and the table laid for tea. Miss Merivale never had late dinner except when she gave a dinner party. She liked the simple, old-fashioned ways she had been accustomed to in her youth. But the table was laid with dainty care; the swinging lamps shone upon shining silver that had been in the family for two hundred years, on an old Worcester tea-set that had been bought by Miss Merivale’s grandmother, on bowls of early spring flowers gathered by Rose that morning from the beautiful old garden at the back of the house. Everything in the room spoke of long years of quiet prosperity. As Miss Merivale took her accustomed seat at the tea-table and looked about her, and then at Tom sitting opposite her, all unwitting of the terrible blow that might be about to fall on him, she could scarcely keep back the sob that rose to her lips. Tom met her glance without seeing the trouble in it, and he smiled cheerfully back at her. “Well, how did the shopping get on?” he asked, “Did you remember the seeds, Rose?” Rose gave him a guilty look. “Oh, Tom, I quite forgot. Did you want them?” He looked vexed for a moment, but only for a moment. “It does not matter. I can write. I promised Jackson he should have them this week. Cousin Ann has a wonderful show of anemones this year, Aunt Lucy. The square bed in the back garden is brilliant with them. We must try them here again next year. I don’t intend to be satisfied till we have beaten Cousin Ann.” “She says the soil here doesn’t suit anemones; they are fanciful flowers,” returned Miss Merivale. “Then you went to Broadhurst, Tom?” “Yes, I just managed it. Old Mrs. Harding was there. She is failing very fast, poor old soul. Part of the time she thought I was Cousin James, Aunt Lucy. She wanted to know when I heard last from my sister Lydia.” Miss Merivale put her cup down with a little clatter. Her hand had begun to tremble. “You are very much like James, Tom,” she said, glancing at the portrait that hung on the wainscoted wall just above him, “and you get more like him every day.”