"They take everything for clever the little idiot says!" he remarked to himself. "Nobody made anything of _me_ when _I_ was his age!" The letters were brought in. Amongst them was one for Mr. Raymount with a broad black border. He looked at the postmark. "This must be the announcement of cousin Strafford's death!" he said. "Some one told me she was not expected to live. I wonder how she has left the property!" "You did not tell me she was ill!" said his wife. "It went out of my head. It is so many years since I had the least communication with her, or heard anything of her! She was a strange old soul!" "You used to be intimate with her--did you not, papa?" said Hester. "Yes, at one time. But we differed so entirely it was impossible it should last. She would take up the oddest notions as to what I thought, and meant, and wanted to do, and then fall out upon me as advocating things I hated quite as much as she did. But that is much the way generally. People seldom know what they mean themselves, and can hardly be expected to know what other people mean. Only the amount of mental and moral force wasted on hating and talking down the non-existent is a pity." "I can't understand why people should quarrel so about their opinions," said Mrs. Raymount. "A great part of it comes of indignation at not being understood and another great part from despair of being understood--and that while all the time the person thus indignant and despairing takes not the smallest pains to understand the neighbor whose misunderstanding of himself makes him so sick and sore." "What is to be done then?" asked Hester. "Nothing," answered her father with something of a cynical smile, born of this same frustrated anxiety to impress his opinions on others. He took up his letter, slowly broke the large black seal which adorned it, and began to read it. His wife sat looking at him, and waiting, in expectation sufficiently mild, to hear its contents. He had scarcely read half the first page when she saw his countenance change a little, then flush a little, then grow a little fixed, and quite inscrutable. He folded the letter, laid it down by the side of his plate, and began to eat again. "Well, dear?" said his wife. "It is not quite what I thought," he answered, with a curious smile, and said nothing more, but ate his toast in a brooding silence. Never in the habit of _making_ secrets, like his puny son, he had a strong dislike to showing his feelings, and from his wife even was inclined to veil them. He was besides too proud to manifest his interest in the special contents of this letter.