Theoretically, she wished him to marry, and she would have liked a pretty, subservient daughter-in-law and a group of well-bred and creditable grandchildren to swell her train; but actually, she resented the idea of relinquishing an iota of her influence. While as to Jane Mostyn, they had gauged each other to a nicety, and though on friendly terms, each resented the other to a finality. Exactly how the pair reconciled their relations to one another, no one knew, probably not even themselves. Westover Village had grown tired of waiting to see what would happen, and cited the case variously as one of obstinacy, where neither would give in, or else crowning them as filial martyrs, according to the temperament of the narrator. Neither Jane Mostyn nor John Hale appeared to mope in the least, but of the two the woman’s life seemed the best rounded, and she, who in the beginning, though several years younger, looked older than the man, had now gained many years of youth. Five years more passed, and Hale resigned what had then grown to a professorship, and, stopping his creative work altogether, relapsed to the mental drudgery of adapting the classics and editing schoolbooks. So the world wagged on until, during the year that Jane Mostyn was fifty-five and John two years older, both parents died, Mr. Mostyn in June and Madam Hale in August. Then, again, the people of Westover were all alert to know if the old spark of romance would revive, or whether it was buried in cold ashes. When the wills of the old people, one nearing and one past eighty, were probated, to the amazement of every one it was found that in each case there were restrictions placed upon the properties, so that the full enjoyment of them depended upon the two heirs not only keeping up the family homesteads as long as they lived, but in absolutely living therein, so determined upon dictation were these parents even after death. The same lawyer, as it had chanced, had drawn up both wills, and he seemed to regard the whole matter in the light of a huge practical joke that might easily be set aside, as there were no near kin, either in the Hale or Mostyn family, and the several institutions that were the conditional residuaries would, under the circumstances, of course compromise. Jane Mostyn felt that she had done her duty, and was now prepared within proper limits to live to the full what of life was left; but John Hale, to whom independent action had so long been a stranger, would neither in spirit nor in letter, it seemed, deviate from his mother’s desires, and as her tyranny had been absolute, so was the gap it left in his life great. Thus by the last of September, after Madam died, people were all agog to know what would become of poor John Hale. * * * * *