Mrs. Craighill had not looked at Wayne through the latter part of her recital and appeal; but she rose now and turned to him smilingly. She wore an air, indeed, of having defined an unassailable position; of having fully mastered its defense, with her own soul supreme in the citadel. Her confidence revealed itself in her voice as she addressed him; he was piqued to find that she apparently dismissed him a little condescendingly, as though their future relations were established on a basis determined by herself and that there was no question of maintaining them there. “Good-bye, Wayne, I must run along now to dress for dinner. You dine with Fanny, don’t you? Please tell your sister how much I appreciate her kindness this morning; and I am grateful for yours, too, Wayne!” He rose as she put out her hand. He looked at her fixedly as though her identity were suddenly in question. Then he laughed softly. “Good-bye, Addie!” He followed her into the hall. She did not look back at him, but went slowly up the stair with a dignity that was new in her. It was as though she wore her new wifehood as a protecting shield and cloak. When he heard her door close he went up to his own room. CHAPTER X MR. WALSH MEETS MRS. CRAIGHILL Wingfield was mistaken when he announced at the Allequippa Club, apropos of Walsh’s purchase of a controlling interest in the Wayne-Craighill Company, that Roger Craighill had never appreciated Walsh’s services. Colonel Craighill not only valued Walsh highly, but he took occasion to express, in a statement given to the newspapers, his “deep sense of loss upon the retirement of my faithful chief of staff, who after years of painstaking labour, reaps the reward of his own industry and fidelity.” More than this, Colonel Craighill made Walsh’s passing the occasion for a dinner to all the employees in his office and to the managers of the mines and coking plants in which he was interested. Walsh was thus used as an illustration of the qualities that make for honourable success. This banquet, provided at a leading hotel toward the end of October, was memorable on many accounts, and not least for the address delivered to the company by the head of the table--an utterance marked by noble sentiment and expressing the highest ideals of conduct in commercial life. Wingfield characterized this somewhat coarsely as “hot air” when he read it in the newspapers; the Colonel was, he averred, the Prince of the Platitudinous. “The Colonel thinks he is looking through the windows of his soul upon Humanity,” remarked Wingfield to a shrewd, skilful occulist with whom he shared such heresies; “but the windows of his soul are all mirrors.” But Wingfield was almost the only man in town who refused to accept Roger Craighill at rather more than face value. Wayne, glancing a few days later at Mrs. Blair’s list of persons to be invited to her reception in their stepmother’s honour, suggested that Walsh ought to be asked.