ugh mist,
the great brown sail, looming, shadowy; one sailor, in a red jersey, at
the tiller. In the corner Robert had scrawled his careless signature and
the words,--"Valfjeldet, Norway, 1897." Sir Peter gently laid the
picture upon the glowing coals of the grate.

"There are six boxes come from Mr. Rowlandson's shop, sir," said his
housekeeper standing quietly behind him.

"Have the screws removed and send them up to Miss Phyllis's room," he
replied. "They are old valentines, Burbage, old valentines that belonged
to her m----for which she has a childish fondness."

II

"Doesn't it seem to you that the windows let in more sunlight of late,
ma'am?" asked a housemaid. She had just finished cleaning those in the
octagonal dining-room. Burbage inspected the windows.

"There is no change in the windows that I can see," she replied. "But
there's more sunlight in the house than in many a year."

This comment of his old housekeeper, six weeks after Sir Peter brought
Phyllis home, might be accepted as the epitome of her life there for ten
long years. Sir Peter was as grim as ever to the servants; but, bless
your heart, hadn't they caught him at his pranks on the floor? Hadn't
they seen his haggard face when the doctor pronounced it diphtheria?
Hadn't they seen him carry her downstairs in his own arms on the first
day it was allowed? Hadn't they seen him helping her with her lessons,
at night,--solving her complex problems in his head while she struggled
over columns of figures, and waiting at the end of that tortuous road
with a smile on his gaunt face, and the right answer, to prove hers
right or wrong? But in languages, Sir Peter was left at the post. Her
master in French was astonished until he learned her mother's name,--by
accident, for it was rarely spoken in that house. The dead languages
were alive to her, too. The shelves in her study-room, upstairs,
contained Sir Peter's old "classics," prettily rebound. The commission
went to Mr. Rowlandson; the execution was Riviere's. Sir Peter had
scarcely looked into them since the old days at Cambridge.

Sunlight in the house, indeed. Her sweet voice, in sudden song, might be
heard at any moment of the day; or the ripple of her piano; or her gay
laughter, musical as the joyous notes of a bird.

She had her intent of them all. Even the determined mind of Burbage,
stern-featured and steel-spectacled, she moulded to a plastic
acquiescence with her own sweet will. I