At last a night came when she had a dream, more poignant, more vivid than any material message could have been--a dream of disaster at home. She was not a superstitious woman, but the impression already in her mind was immensely deepened. She was needed at home; that was her place. What madness it had been for her to go away, and what a selfish madness, made up partly of desire to rest and partly of a wish to prove Despard wrong! She might have cause to reproach herself for the remainder of her life. She could forgive him all that she herself had suffered, removed from her work, deprived of all occupation and happy home activities, but if anything had gone wrong with those she loved---- That very afternoon she went home. Once inside her own gates she began to see signs of her three weeks’ absence. Although the grounds were nominally her husband’s charge, the standards since her departure had evidently been lowered. The gutters were but half cleared and the gravel unraked. The appearance of the house confirmed her fears. The window curtains had not been changed. Sixty-two dirty window curtains seemed to her to offer but a dreary welcome. In spite of sunshine, the rainy-day door mat greeted her, left from the day before, which had been rainy; and the brasses of the door, though not actually tarnished, lacked that elysian brightness on which she herself insisted. As she mounted the steps two of the boys came running up--hugging and clawing at her with hands on which she caught a glimpse of the lustrous veneer of dirt. They were so glad to see her; and little Lewis had been ill. Her heart stood still--oh, only a cold. Where was he? she asked them, and when they said--oh, horror!--out with the governess in the pony cart, she sent them racing after him. The darkest forebodings filled her mind as to what she would find within. She rang and, after an interval too long by several minutes, Churchley opened the door. For an instant his appearance drove all other thoughts away. “Why, Churchley,” she cried, “you have been putting on weight!” Churchley acknowledged the imputation with a smile that approached dangerously near a dimple. “Yes, madame,” he said, “I’ve taken a great turn for the better,” and he asked sympathetically after her own health. She made no answer, but, turning her head away from the staircase, in whose crevices she had already detected faint gray lines of dust, she moved toward the library door, which Churchley quietly opened for her. She saw with a shock that the arrangement of the furniture--an arrangement sanctified by twenty years of habit--had been altered. Two desks had been drawn near the windows without any respect for symmetry, and at these, back to back, her husband and daughter were sitting. That Celia should bring her school-books to the library, though unusual, was not unnatural, but the sight of Royce at work on page after page of foolscap was something requiring an explanation.