l of
incorruptible silence. A younger servant performed the duties.

He sat at the head of his table and excused the absence of his
mother and forced himself with the pride and dignity of his race to
give no sign of what had passed that day. His mother's maid
entered, bringing him in a crystal vase a dark red flower for his
coat. She had always given him that same dark red flower after he
had turned into manhood. "It is your kind," she said; "I
understand."

He arranged the tray for her, pouring out her tea, buttering the
rolls. Then he forced himself to eat his supper as usual. From
old candlesticks on the table a silver radiance was shed on the
massive silver, on the gem-like glass. Candelabra on the
mantelpiece and the sideboard lighted up the browned oak of the
walls.

He left the table at last, giving and hearing a good night. The
servants efficiently ended their duties and put out the lights. In
the front hall lamps were left burning; there were lamps and
candles in the library. He went off to a room on the ground floor
in one ell of the house; it was his sitting room, smoking room, the
lounging place of his friends. In one corner stood a large desk,
holding old family papers; here also were articles that he himself
had lately been engaged on--topics relating to scientific
agriculture, soils, and stock-raising. It was the road by which
some of the country gentlemen who had been his forefathers passed
into a larger life of practical affairs--going into the Legislature
of the state or into the Senate; and he had thought of this as a
future for himself. For an hour or two he looked through family
papers.

Then he put them aside and squarely faced the meaning of the day.
His thoughts traversed the whole track of Dent's life--one straight
track upward. No deviations, no pitfalls there, no rising and
falling. And now early marriage and safety from so many problems;
with work and honors and wifely love and children: work and rest
and duty to the end. Dent had called him into his room that
morning after he was dressed for his wedding and had started to
thank him for his love and care and guardianship and then had
broken down and they had locked their arms around each other,
trying not to say what could not be said.

He lived again through that long afternoon with his mother. What
had the whole day been to her and how she had risen to meet with
nobility all its sadnesses! Her smile lived before h