Mrs. Craighill had seen her husband manifest anger on the night of Wayne’s departure for Philadelphia, but she had not until this morning found him crabbed and petulant. A night in a sleeping-car is not conducive to serenity, but a wife has a right to expect her lord to bring a bright countenance home from the wars. Colonel Craighill greeted Jean with his habitual courtesy, but scarcely heeded his wife’s explanation of the young woman’s presence in the house. He excused himself, going to his room to retouch his sleeping-car toilet, and Jean went directly to the Institute. Mrs. Craighill bade her come often to see her; but the invitation lacked warmth and as Jean passed out of the grounds through the snow-walled path she wondered much about the Craighill household. But it was not of Mrs. Craighill or the handsome, courteous Colonel Craighill that she thought most, but of Wayne. She walked through the crisp morning with her head high; for she was a woman, and it was sweet to know that she had, by his own confession, an influence over a man; that he had asked her help and that she, denying this, had agreed upon a middle ground on which it might be possible to meet and know him. He was less inexplicable to her now. Knowledge of his unpleasant reputation, gathered from newspapers and from chance remarks of ignorant gossips, filled her no longer with repugnance. She tried to recall, over and over again as she tramped toward the Institute, just what she had said to him about labour, and about her belief in it as a means of grace for him; but oftener still she remembered how he had held her hand against his face, not kissing it, for that would have been too much, but holding it against his cheek--her hand that had known labour! And thinking of this she smiled so that passers-by turned to look at the tall, dark girl, with her lifted head and face illumined by happiness. At the Craighill house happiness was not so legibly written on the two faces at the breakfast table. Colonel Craighill was clearly troubled, and the urbanity with which he asked as to his wife’s health and the state of household affairs did not conceal the vexed undercurrent of his thoughts. “What has Wayne been doing?” he inquired with a directness that for a moment disconcerted her. “Oh, he has been in and out about as usual. I have not seen much of him. It was lonely in the house so I asked Miss Morley to stay with me. She’s an Art Institute student that I met at Fanny’s. Fanny has been called South, you know, by the illness of Mr. Blair’s mother.” “Ah! I’m very sorry to hear that. So Fanny’s not at home.” He finished his breakfast in silence and then, after a moment’s deliberation, began: “I’m obliged, my dear Adelaide, to speak of a very unpleasant matter. Your mother persisted in calling on me at the Brodericks’, very greatly to my annoyance. I was amazed that she should be in Boston; I thought she had gone abroad.”