They had sent deep roots into his nature, and she fancied that she could foresee the effect on his later years,--years pallid, listless, forever yearning after a spiritual fantasy always denied; forever reaching backward with regret for the past wasted in an unasked and seemingly a spurned service. Her motherly heart went out to Owen Haines, and she would fain have coddled him out of his--religion, was it? She did not know; she could not argue. But Euphemia was her only child, and it is not necessary that the materials shall be ivory and gold and curious inlay to enable a zealous worshiper to set up an idol. Mrs. Sims looked into the juggler’s handsome face with its alert eyes and blithe mundane expression, and as proxy she loved him so heartily that she did not doubt his past, nor carp at his future, nor question his motives. The fact of his lingering here so long--for he had asked only a night’s lodging, and afterward had taken board by the week--occurred to her more than once as a symptom of a sentimental interest in Euphemia; for otherwise why did he not betake himself about his affairs? This theory had languished recently, since naught developed to support it. Now when she began to suspect that this vicarious sentiment of hers on Euphemia’s account was about to meet a return, Mrs. Sims’s heart was all a-flutter with anxiety and pity and secret exultation. One moment she trembled lest Euphemia should mark the thoughtful silent scrutiny of which she was the subject, but when she chanced to lift her long-lashed eyes, the juggler reddened suddenly, averted his own, and drank his coffee scalding hot. Euphemia evidently was oblivious of him, and Mrs. Sims became wroth within her amiable-seeming mask, and said to herself that she would as soon have a dough child, since one could “take notice ez peart ez Phemie.” Perhaps because of Mrs. Sims’s superabundant flesh, which rendered her of a quiescent appearance, however active her interest, and perhaps because she did not appeal in any manner to the ungrateful juggler’s hypercritical and finical prepossessions, he had no subtle intimations that she was cognizant in a degree of his mental processes, and had noted the fact of the frequent serious dwelling of his eyes, and manifestly his thoughts, upon Euphemia.