The first night in the great wainscoted dining-room, with a man bringing unknown dishes to her elbow, with candles shining on elaborate and useless pieces of silver, with the glow of firelight flickering out from under a superb chimney-piece of Mexican marble, and dancing about the stately and dignified room--the beauty and the graciousness and the wonder of it was an overwhelming experience, though she had not the dimmest idea of the fortune it represented--a fortune notorious and envied the land over. That she had had no share in it until now did not wound her in the least; she was grateful for the warmth and the comfort and the kindness, now they had come; she never harked back to the painful years of silence and forgetfulness. Her brother and his wife watched her, amused and interested; her dazzled admiration of everything was half touching, half droll. But what a confession it was! Eleanor Blair realized this, and she said to herself, warmly, that she would make up to Robert’s sister for the past. She was in her element in arranging her sister-in-law’s future; she made a dozen plans for her in the first week; but her husband laughed and shook his head. “Wait,” he said; “time enough when we see how we get along.” But they got along very well. The children, after the first shy awkwardness had worn off, were really attractive. Silas, an eager brown-eyed boy of eleven, lovable in spite of his name, made artless and pretty love to his pretty aunt, who found him a delightful plaything. “The serious Esther,” as her uncle called her, was a friendly little creature, when one came to know her; her common-sense commended her to Mr. Blair, and her dressmaking and her education were an immediate interest to her aunt.