heavy; she also loved hot and sweet tea and the little cakes that Amy sometimes bought, red and yellow and pink, held in white paper--also plum-pudding, which, alas! only came at Christmastime and wedding-cake, which scarcely ever came at all. This vice, of which she was almost triumphantly conscious as though it were a proof of her enduring vitality, she clutched eagerly to herself. She did not wish that any human being should perceive it. Of her husband she was not afraid--it would never possibly occur to him that food was of importance to any one; Amy might discover what she pleased, she was in strong alliance with her mother and would never betray her. Her fear was of Martin. She feared very deeply his influence upon her husband. During Martin's absence she and Amy had managed very successfully to have the house as they wished it; John Warlock, the master, had been too deeply occupied with the affairs of the soul to be concerned also with the affairs of the body. She had, she believed, exercised an increasing influence over him. She had always loved him with a fierce and selfish love, but now, when he was nearly seventy, and to both of them only a few years of earthly ambition could remain, she desired, with all the urgent ferocity of a human being through whose fingers the last sands of his opportunity are slipping, to seize and hold and have him entirely hers. He had always eluded her; although he had once certainly loved her with, at any rate, a semblance of earthly passion, his spiritual life had always come between them, holding him from her, helping him to escape when he pleased, tantalising, sometimes maddening too. She was certainly now not so ready to dismiss that spiritual life as once she had been. She was herself an old heathen; for herself she believed in nothing but her earthly appetites and desires, but for him and for others there might be something in it, ... and perhaps some day some dreadful thing would occur ... a chariot of Fire descend upon the Chapel and some sort of a fierce and hostile God deliver judgment; she only hoped that she would be dead before then. Meanwhile she and Amy had, undoubtedly, during these last years, increased their influence over him. He was not aware of it, but as he was growing now older and weaker--he had had trouble with his heart--he inevitably depended more upon them. The old lady began to count upon her triumph. Then came Martin's return. She had forgotten Martin. It is true that she had written to him every week during his long absence, but her letters had been all part of the "dear old lady" habit which was put on by her just as an actress prepares herself, nightly, for a character in which she knows she is the greatest possible success. "Thank you very much, Mrs. Smith ... No, we've not heard from Martin now for three weeks. Careless boy! I always write myself every week so that he may have at any rate one little word from home ..."