The sensation of being suddenly established as mistress of a home over which another woman had presided for twenty years, and in which she has borne and reared children and died, was to be Mrs. Craighill’s fully to-day. Mrs. Blair went thoroughly into all the domestic arrangements with the housekeeper attending. She revealed the repositories of linen, the moth-proof lodgments for woollen fabrics, the secret storehouses of fruit and vegetables. On these rounds Mrs. Blair evinced a sincere desire to be of help. She had fortified herself against heartache, but there were things that hurt. The ineffaceable marks of her mother’s forethought and labour were wrought into the deeper history of the house, and could never be understood by this newcomer, who laid ignorant hands upon the ark of the domestic covenant and yet escaped destruction. Several times, on this tour of inspection, Colonel Craighill spoke his first wife’s name, and his manner and tone gave to his daughter’s sensitive intelligence a completer idea of his perfect detachment from the earlier tie. She felt the tightening of the heart that every woman feels when an illustration of man’s forgetfulness strikes close home. She foresees at once her own replacement by another; fickle flowers of remembrance are rusty patches on her grave where the winds of December moan forever. Fanny Blair, already, by this prevision, saw herself forgotten and her own successor entering her husband’s door, while her children, unkempt and tearful, wailed dolorously before the gates of oblivion. CHAPTER IX “HELP ME TO BE A GOOD WOMAN” When Wayne returned to the office after luncheon he looked in upon his father, who, having cleared his desk with his habitual easy dispatch, was addressing himself to the consideration of new business. Roger Craighill’s desk was never littered; a few sheets of figures lay before him as he glanced over his glasses at Wayne. “Sit down a moment. You may remember that I have wanted, for several years, to get out of the jobbing business. Now I have an offer for it that it seems best to accept. Walsh wishes to buy it.” “Walsh!” exclaimed Wayne. “I was surprised that he should want to leave us,” Colonel Craighill continued. “I’m rather more surprised that he should be able to!” said Wayne, who saw nothing heinous in Walsh’s wish to leave the office if he could do better elsewhere. It was, however, quite like his father to express amazement that a valued subordinate should desert his standard. Within a fortnight Wayne’s attitude toward his father had unconsciously hardened; what once had been fitful rebellion was now stubborn revolt. In his heart, Wayne felt that his father had never appreciated Walsh, and he hoped now, that if the silent lieutenant left, the loss would precipitate the breaking down of this complacency, this perfect self-confidence.