read his homesickness and his
longing for her in every line.

"Poor boy, I am afraid he is lonely," she thought, and caressed the
paper as tenderly as if it had been the letter of a lover. He had
written to her every Sunday since he had first gone off to college and
several times she knew that he had denied himself a pleasure in order to
send her her weekly letter. Already, she had begun to trust to his
"sense of responsibility" as she had never, even in the early days of
her marriage, trusted to Oliver's.

Opening the large square envelope which was addressed in Jenny's
impressive handwriting, she found four closely written pages
entertainingly descriptive of the girl's journey back to college and of
the urgent interests she found awaiting her there. In this letter there
was none of the weakness of implied sentiment, there was none of the
plaintive homesickness she had read in Harry's. Jenny wrote regularly
and affectionately because she felt that it was her duty to do so, for,
unlike Lucy, who was heard from only when she wanted something, she was
a girl who obeyed sedulously the promptings of her conscience. But if
she loved her mother, she was plainly not interested in her. Her
attitude towards life was masculine rather than feminine; and Virginia
had long since learned that in the case of a man it is easier to inspire
love than it is to hold his attention. Harry was different, of
course--there was a feminine, or at least a poetic, streak in him which
endowed him with that natural talent for the affections which is
supposed to be womanly--but Jenny resembled Oliver in her preference for
the active rather than for the passive side of experience.

Going upstairs, Virginia took off her hat and coat, and, without
changing her dress, came down again with a piece of fancy-work in her
hands. Placing herself under the lamp in Oliver's study, she took a few
careful stitches in the centrepiece she was embroidering for Lucy, and
then letting her needle fall, sat gazing into the wood-fire which
crackled softly on the brass andirons. From the lamp on the desk an
amber glow fell on the dull red of the leather-covered furniture, on the
pale brown of the walls, on the rich blending of oriental colours in the
rug at her feet. It was the most comfortable room in the house, and for
that reason she had fallen into the habit of using it when Oliver was
away. Then, too, his personality had impressed itself so ineffaceably
upon the sur