In the kitchen the cook was carefully compounding the soup while watching the roast. Lucius, deft and absorbed, was preparing the table, arranging the coffee service and deciding upon the china. On the seat under the pear-trees Miss Franklin was chatting with Mrs. Gilman, and in the barn the coachman could be heard giving the horses their evening taste of green grass--"and yet how empty, aimless, and foolish it all is if Bertha is unhappy," thought the master. He grew alarmed for fear she would not come down; but at last he heard her light step on the stairs, and when she came in view his dim eyes were startled by the transformation in her. She had put on the plainest of her gowns, and she wore no jewels. By other ways which he felt but could not analyze she expressed some portentous shift of mood. He could not define why, but her step scared him, so measured and resolute it seemed. She called to her mother and Miss Franklin and then asked, "Has dinner been announced?" Her tone was quiet and natural, and Mart was relieved. He answered with attempt at jocularity, "Lucius is this minute winkin' at me over the soup-tureen." As they took seats at the table Mrs. Gilman exclaimed, "Why, dearie, where did you dig up that old waist?" "Will it do to visit Sibley in?" "No indeed! I should say not. When you go back there I want you to wear the best you've got. They'll consider it an insult if you don't." A faint smile lighted Bertha's pale face. "I don't think they'll take it so hard as all that." "Are you goin' to Sibley?" asked Mart, an anxious tone in his voice. "I thought of it. Mother is going over to-night, and I rather guess I'll run over with her. I've never been back, you see, since that night." There was something ominous in her restraint, in her abstraction of glance, and especially in her lack of appetite. She took little account of her guests and seemed profoundly engaged upon some inward calculation. The beautifully spread table, which would have thrilled her a few short weeks ago, was powerless to even hold her gaze, and it was Lucius (deft and watchful) who brought the meal to a successful conclusion--for the mother was awed and helpless in the presence of the queenly daughter whom wealth had translated into something almost too high and shining for her to lay hand upon. Miss Franklin did her best, but she was not a person of light and dancing intellectual feet, and she had never understood Haney, anyhow. Altogether it was a dismal and difficult half-hour. When the coffee came on Bertha rose abruptly, saying, "Come out into the garden, Mart, I've got something to say to you."