h had ever absorbed him could compare in
momentousness with the plans that absorbed him now, for he had to plan
how to enter the unknown country where he was not even sure of being
recognized as an Amberson--not sure of anything, except that Isabel
would help him if she could. His absorption produced the outward effect
of reverie, but of course it was not. The Major was occupied with the
first really important matter that had taken his attention since he came
home invalided, after the Gettysburg campaign, and went into business;
and he realized that everything which had worried him or delighted
him during this lifetime between then and to-day--all his buying and
building and trading and banking--that it all was trifling and waste
beside what concerned him now.

He seldom went out of his room, and often left untouched the meals they
brought to him there; and this neglect caused them to shake their heads
mournfully, again mistaking for dazedness the profound concentration of
his mind. Meanwhile, the life of the little bereft group still forlornly
centering upon him began to pick up again, as life will, and to emerge
from its own period of dazedness. It was not Isabel's father but her son
who was really dazed.

A month after her death he walked abruptly into Fanny's room, one night,
and found her at her desk, eagerly adding columns of figures with which
she had covered several sheets of paper. This mathematical computation
was concerned with her future income to be produced by the electric
headlight, now just placed on the general market; but Fanny was ashamed
to be discovered doing anything except mourning, and hastily pushed
the sheets aside, even as she looked over her shoulder to greet her
hollow-eyed visitor.

"George! You startled me."

"I beg your pardon for not knocking," he said huskily. "I didn't think."

She turned in her chair and looked at him solicitously. "Sit down,
George, won't you?"

"No. I just wanted--"

"I could hear you walking up and down in your room," said Fanny. "You
were doing it ever since dinner, and it seems to me you're at it almost
every evening. I don't believe it's good for you--and I know it would
worry your mother terribly if she--" Fanny hesitated.

"See here," George said, breathing fast, "I want to tell you once more
that what I did was right. How could I have done anything else but what
I did do?"

"About what, George?"

"About everything!" he exclaimed; and he became ve