“Home, Joe!” and he sat silently pondering until the car drew up at his father’s door. As he hung up his coat he was conscious of a new expectation, a new exhilaration. His heart beat fast as he stood, listening intently, like one who is startled by an obscure sound in a lonely house and waits for its recurrence. He had gone home to see his father’s wife; he had gone expecting to find her alone, and he peered into the dim drawing room guardedly as though fearful of detection. A clock on the stair struck the half-hour and its chime, familiar from childhood, beat upon his ears jarringly, and sent confused alarms bounding through his pulses. He turned into the library and there the thronging hosts of memory that the scene summoned, steadied and sobered him as he stood within the portières. Then, as he swung round into the hall, he heard a light laugh above, and Mrs. Craighill came running down to meet him. Her step on the stair was noiseless; his pictorial sense was alive to the grace of her swift descent. “Home so soon!” She put out her hand and waited at the foot of the stair. A rose-coloured house-gown, whose half-sleeves disclosed her arms from the elbow, seemed to diffuse a glow about her. He stood staring and unsmiling where her laugh had first arrested him until she spoke again. “I didn’t know I was so forbidding as all that!” she said and walked past him into the library. She found a seat and he threw himself into a chair a little distance away from her. They looked at each other intently, he grave and sullen, she smiling. “Well, you did it!” he said presently. “Please!” She turned with her lips pouting prettily and glanced over her shoulder. “Please be nice to me!” “You haven’t changed your tricks; you don’t have to beg admiration, so cut it all out. What if I had stopped it?” “Well, you didn’t--though I gave you your chance.” “You needn’t give me credit for too much generosity. I was on a spree and didn’t get your letter until the trap was well sprung, and, besides, the name threw me off. It was only when the Colonel showed me your photograph, carried sacredly in his pocket, that I knew who you were. How’s your dear mama?” “For once in her life I think she’s satisfied; she’s gone abroad, thank heaven!” “Now that you’re fixed I suppose she will do something on her own account. She’s a wonder, that mother of yours.” “Mama has her ambitions,” Mrs. Craighill observed pensively. “Her greed, you mean. How did you get on with Fanny this morning?” “Your sister’s a dear! I’m quite in love with her; she was perfectly lovely to me--kind as could be and anxious to be helpful. I’m already very fond of her.” “I dare say your affections will include the whole family before you get through with us.”