The barest hint of this kind would have raised Harry's suspicion and anger a few weeks before; the new mood which Mina Zabriska had marked in him made him take it quietly now, and even affectionately. For this Addie Tristram was grateful; she had always the rare grace of seeming surprised at her own power over men. It was no less in keeping with her character and her life that the feeling she suffered under, and manifested, was very easily appeased. Harry promised to ask the Gainsboroughs to her funeral. Addie Tristram's conscientious scruples were entirely laid to rest; with a sigh of peace she settled herself to die. It was the feudal feeling, Harry decided, which insisted that the family must not be ignored; it did not deny their humble position, or the gulf that separated them from the succession. Yet he was vaguely vexed, even while he agreed to what she wanted. So she passed away in the full tide of the darkness of night. The doctor had left her some hours before, the nurse had been sent to bed, for there was nothing that could be done. Harry was alone with her; he kissed her when she was dead, and stood many minutes by her, looking from her to the picture of her that hung on the wall. A strange loneliness was on him, a loneliness which there seemed nobody to solace. He had said that Blent would not be much without his mother. That was not quite right; it was much, but different. She had carried away with her the atmosphere of the place, the essence of the life that he had lived there with her. Who would make that the same to him again? Suddenly he recollected that in four days he was to ask Janie Iver for her answer. Say a week now, for the funeral would enforce or excuse so much postponement. Janie Iver would not give him back the life or the atmosphere. A description of how he felt, had it been related to him a year ago, would have appeared an absurdity. Yet these crowding unexpected thoughts made not a hair's breadth of difference in what he purposed. It was only that he became aware of an irreparable change of scene; there was to be no change in his action. He was Tristram of Blent now--that he must and would remain. But it was not the same Blent, and did not seem as though it could be again. So much of the poetry had gone out of it with Addie Tristram.