Eaton,” and he was as used to her as he was to his battered old desk or his worn Bible. But when he came to die, he lay in his bed and watched her as he had not done these fifteen years; and once he said, when she brought him his medicine, “You’ve been a good wife, Mrs. Eaton;” and once, “You’re very kind, Lily.” But this was at the end, and the doctor said his mind was wandering. And then the end had come, in the spring night, towards dawn; and now he was lying still, as indifferent to the soft weather, the shower of apple blossoms, the two children whispering about the house, the wife staring, dry-eyed, out into the sunshine--as indifferent as he always had been. Well, well; he was a good man, they said; and now he had gone to find the God whom he had defamed and vilified under the name of religion, imputing to Him meanness and cruelty and revenge--the passions of his own poor human nature. And may that God have mercy on his soul! II Robert Blair came into the dining-room, holding the “dollar telegram” in his hand. His wife looked up at him, smiling. “It is really shameful the way business pursues you! I am going to tell Samuel to burn all dispatches that come here. Your office is the place for those horrid yellow papers.” “It isn’t business this time, Nellie; it’s death.” “Oh, Robert!” “Oh,” he hastened to explain, “it’s nothing that touches us. My sister Lydia’s husband is dead. You have heard me speak of my sister Lydia, haven’t you? It was long before your day, you baby, that she married him. Ah, well, what a pretty girl she was!” He sat down, shook his head when the man offered him some soup, and opened his napkin thoughtfully. “Well, he’s dead. He was a most objectionable person”-- Mrs. Blair looked at the butler’s back as he stood at the sideboard, and raised her eyebrows; but her husband went on, a wrinkle like a cut deepening on his forehead:-- “My father forbade it--did I never tell you about it?--but Lydia, who had always been a nonentity, suddenly acquired a will, and married him. My father never forgave her. She evidently didn’t care for any affection that didn’t include him, and cut herself off from all of us. Of course I’m sorry for her now; but I don’t feel that I have anything to reproach myself with.” He tapped the table with impatient fingers, and told the butler that he didn’t want his claret _boiled_. “Haven’t you any sense, Samuel? You’re a perfect fool about wine; here, throw that out of the window, and get me a fresh bottle!” Mrs. Blair was a beautiful young woman, who, two years before, had married this irascible, successful, dogmatic man, and (so Mercer said) could wind him round any one of her pretty jeweled fingers whenever she wanted to. He certainly was very much in love--and so was she, though her particular world never believed it, alleging that she was not indifferent to the loaves and fishes.