beneath his window and, looking out, saw her
directing the removal of plants from a small garden bed to the Major's
conservatory for the winter. There was an air of briskness about her; as
she turned away to go into the house, she laughed gaily with the Major's
gardener over something he said, and this unconcerned cheerfulness of
her was terrible to her son.

He went to his desk, and, searching the jumbled contents of a drawer,
brought forth a large, unframed photograph of his father, upon which he
gazed long and piteously, till at last hot tears stood in his eyes. It
was strange how the inconsequent face of Wilbur seemed to increase in
high significance during this belated interview between father and son;
and how it seemed to take on a reproachful nobility--and yet, under the
circumstances, nothing could have been more natural than that George,
having paid but the slightest attention to his father in life, should
begin to deify him, now that he was dead. "Poor, poor father!" the son
whispered brokenly. "Poor man, I'm glad you didn't know!"

He wrapped the picture in a sheet of newspaper, put it under his arm,
and, leaving the house hurriedly and stealthily, went downtown to the
shop of a silversmith, where he spent sixty dollars on a resplendently
festooned silver frame for the picture. Having lunched upon more coffee,
he returned to the house at two o'clock, carrying the framed photograph
with him, and placed it upon the centre-table in the library, the room
most used by Isabel and Fanny and himself. Then he went to a front
window of the long "reception room," and sat looking out through the
lace curtains.

The house was quiet, though once or twice he heard his mother and Fanny
moving about upstairs, and a ripple of song in the voice of Isabel--a
fragment from the romantic ballad of Lord Bateman.

"Lord Bateman was a noble lord, A noble lord of high degree; And he
sailed West and he sailed East, Far countries for to see...."

The words became indistinct; the air was hummed absently; the humming
shifted to a whistle, then drifted out of hearing, and the place was
still again.

George looked often at his watch, but his vigil did not last an hour. At
ten minutes of three, peering through the curtain, he saw an automobile
stop in front of the house and Eugene Morgan jump lightly down from it.
The car was of a new pattern, low and long, with an ample seat in the
tonneau, facing forward; and a professional driver sat