“He’s a boy of moods, poor Wayne! Just now he’s going to the office every day. His cleverness is amazing when he applies himself; but let a new kind of motor catch his eye and off he goes! He’s struck a new humour lately--devoting himself to the study of a lot of most complicated legal matters--contracts and the like. Such things are best left to the lawyers. But he has kept straight for some time and that’s something. It’s a good deal, and I’m grateful for it. I have always let him do as he pleased at the office in the hope that he would some day find something that interested him.” “He’s very bright--and likable,” said Mrs. Craighill. “Fanny says he’s a genius.” “Fanny can see no wrong in her brother, and I’m glad of it; but she has kept me ignorant of many of his worst escapades and I have simply never been able to get near him. We are very unlike.” “Isn’t that strange! I’ve been thinking that in so many ways you and he are much alike.” “Physically, yes; he has my build. I rather fancy that I’m still as erect as he is!” He smiled and waited for her acquiescence, but she had been thinking intently and did not at once meet his eyes. They had rarely spoken of Wayne; it could hardly be said that they avoided mentioning him; but his life was outside theirs; his sleeping in the house and eating one meal a day with them left him a tolerated tenant whose ways it were wiser not to question. Mrs. Craighill observed with interest that her husband seemed willing to take credit for his son’s admirable physical proportions, but that his paternal pride stopped there. Her attitude toward her husband was so wholly sympathetic to-night that she saw Wayne with his eyes. It must indeed be a grievous thing to have lived an honorable life, to have made a place for one’s self and to find both name and position brought low by a profligate son. “Fanny is very happy,” continued Colonel Craighill. “John is a splendid fellow--steady as a rock, and with high ideals. A woman like Fanny needs such a man to check her exuberances.” “Oh, she’s most delightful and she has certainly been kind to me! She might have made it hard for me if she had wanted to.” “Oh, she’s kind!” smiled Colonel Craighill, though his tone implied that allowances must be made for Fanny. “There’s a good deal of the Wayne in her, just as there is in her brother.” He shook his head and sighed. As they left the dining room her husband placed his arm about her. These intimations of his secret feeling toward his children seemed to have knit her closer into his life; she felt the ground solider under her feet. She was not without her sensibilities and she had realized that a second wife does not at once wear her new robes easily. It is as though she blundered upon a stage whose scene has been set by another hand. Its mechanism, its lights, its exits are unfamiliar. She is haunted by the dread of missing her cue and of hearing a ghostly prompter’s voice mocking her off stage.