recovered her
voice sufficiently to give orders that no one should mention the
Beauforts to her again, and asked--when Dr. Bencomb appeared--what in
the world her family meant by making such a fuss about her health.

"If people of my age WILL eat chicken-salad in the evening what are
they to expect?" she enquired; and, the doctor having opportunely
modified her dietary, the stroke was transformed into an attack of
indigestion. But in spite of her firm tone old Catherine did not
wholly recover her former attitude toward life. The growing remoteness
of old age, though it had not diminished her curiosity about her
neighbours, had blunted her never very lively compassion for their
troubles; and she seemed to have no difficulty in putting the Beaufort
disaster out of her mind. But for the first time she became absorbed
in her own symptoms, and began to take a sentimental interest in
certain members of her family to whom she had hitherto been
contemptuously indifferent.

Mr. Welland, in particular, had the privilege of attracting her notice.
Of her sons-in-law he was the one she had most consistently ignored;
and all his wife's efforts to represent him as a man of forceful
character and marked intellectual ability (if he had only "chosen") had
been met with a derisive chuckle. But his eminence as a valetudinarian
now made him an object of engrossing interest, and Mrs. Mingott issued
an imperial summons to him to come and compare diets as soon as his
temperature permitted; for old Catherine was now the first to recognise
that one could not be too careful about temperatures.

Twenty-four hours after Madame Olenska's summons a telegram announced
that she would arrive from Washington on the evening of the following
day. At the Wellands', where the Newland Archers chanced to be
lunching, the question as to who should meet her at Jersey City was
immediately raised; and the material difficulties amid which the
Welland household struggled as if it had been a frontier outpost, lent
animation to the debate. It was agreed that Mrs. Welland could not
possibly go to Jersey City because she was to accompany her husband to
old Catherine's that afternoon, and the brougham could not be spared,
since, if Mr. Welland were "upset" by seeing his mother-in-law for the
first time after her attack, he might have to be taken home at a
moment's notice. The Welland sons would of course be "down town," Mr.
Lovell Mingott would be just hurryin