an hard. Lydia felt herself panting in sympathy. She had a distaste for
him, too, even with this ache of pity sharper than any she had felt
while she dreamed about him before he came. What did he want to do it
for? she thought, as she watched him run. Why need he stir up in her a
deeper sorrow than any she had felt? She stepped back from her stand
behind the curtain, and began to brush her hair. She wasn't very happy.
It was impossible to feel triumphant because he was out of prison. She
had lost a cherished dream, that was all. After this she wouldn't wake
in the morning thinking: "Some day he'll be free." She would think:
"He's come. What shall we do with him?"

When she went down she found everybody had got up early, and Mary
Nellen, with some prescience of it, had breakfast ready. Jeff, now in
his coat, stood by the dining-room door with his father, talking in a
commonplace way about the house as it used to be, and the colonel was
professing himself glad no newer fashions had made him change it in
essentials.

"Here they are," said he. "Here are the girls."

Anne, while Lydia entered from the hall, was coming the other way, from
the kitchen where she had been to match conclusions with Mary Nellen
about bacon and toast. Anne was flushed from the kitchen heat, and she
had the spirit to smile and call, "Good morning." But Lydia felt halting
and speechless. She had thought proudly of the tact she should show when
this moment came, but she met it like a child. They sat down, and Anne
poured coffee and asked how Farvie had slept. But before anybody had
begun to eat, there was a knock at the front door, and Mary Nellen,
answering it, came back to Anne, in a distinct puzzle over what was to
be done now:

"It's a newspaper man."

Lydia, in her distress, gave Jeffrey a quick look, to see if he had
heard. He put his napkin down. His jaw seemed suddenly to set.

"Reporters?" he asked his father.

The fulness had gone out of Farvie's face.

"I think you'd better let me see them," he began, but Jeffrey got up and
pushed back his chair.

"No," said he. "Go on with your breakfast."

They heard him in the hall, giving a curt greeting. "What do you want?"
it seemed to say. "Get it over."

There was a deep-toned query then, and Jeffrey answered, without
lowering his voice, in what seemed to Lydia and Anne, watching the
effect on their father, a reckless, if not a brutal, disregard of
decencies:

"Nothing to say. Yes, I