He left the room unnoticed a few minutes later and wandered into the wide hall, feeling the atmosphere of the house flow around him. It was the local custom, in our ready American fashion of conferring antiquity, to speak of the mansion as the old Craighill place. The house, built originally in the early seventies, had recently been remodelled and enlarged. It occupied half a block, and the grounds were beautifully kept, faithful to traditions of Mrs. Craighill’s taste. The full force of the impending change in his father’s life now struck Wayne for the first time. There is no eloquence like that of absence. He stood by the open drawing room door with his childhood and youth calling to all his senses. The thought of his mother stole across his memory--a gentle, bright, smiling spirit. The pictures on the walls; the familiar furniture; the broad fireplace; the tall bronze vases that guarded the glass doors of the conservatory, whose greenery showed at the end of the long room--those things cried to him now with a new appeal. A great bowl of yellow chrysanthemums, glowing in a far corner, struck upon his sight like flame. He walked the length of the room and gazed up at a portrait of his mother, painted in Paris by a famous artist. Its vitality had in some way vanished; the figure no longer seemed poised, ready to step down into the room. The luminous quality of the face was gone; the eyes were not so brightly responsive as of old--he was so sure of these differences that he flashed off the frame lights with a half-conscious feeling that a shadow had fallen upon the spirit represented there, and that it was kinder to leave it in darkness. His sister called him on some pretext--he was very dear to her and the fact that he and his father were so utterly unsympathetic increased her tenderness--and repeated the programme of entertainments which she had proposed. “It’s quite ample. There’s never any question about your doing enough, Fanny,” he remarked indifferently. Colonel Craighill announced that he must go down to the Club to a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Greater City Improvement League, in which his son-in-law was interested. “Wayne, you will take Fanny home in your own car, won’t you? Or maybe you’ll wait for John to stop?” “I must go soon; Wayne will look after me,” she said, and they both went to the door to see their father off. “It’s like old times,” she sighed, as the motor moved away; “but those times won’t come any more.” Then with a change of manner she turned upon Wayne and seized his hands. “Wayne, have you ever seen that woman before?” He shook himself free with a roughness that was unlike him. “Don’t be silly: of course not. I never heard of her. How did you get that idea?” “You looked as though you were seeing a ghost when you looked at her picture.”