Timothy, her father, on whose memory
and his own bargain with Timothy's widow he never cared much to dwell?

Yes, she was, d----d like--after a while he decided; with just the same
set of head and careless grace, and that hateful stamp of breeding that
had so lamentably escaped his own children, half La Sarthe, too. It was
just Timothy of the gray eyes come back again--not Elaine so much now,
not at all, in fact, except in the line of the throat.

His solid, coarse voice was a little husky, and those who knew him well
would have been aware that James Anderton was greatly moved as he bid
his stepdaughter welcome.

And when she had gone off to her room, accompanied by the boisterous
Mabel and Ethel, he said to his wife:

"Lu, you must get the girl some decent clothes. She looks confoundedly a
lady, but that rubbish isn't fair to her. Rig her out as good as the
rest--no expense spared. See to it to-morrow, my dear."

And Mrs. Anderton promised. She adored shopping, and this would be a
labor of love. So she went off to dress for dinner, full of visions of
bright pinks and blues and laces and ribbons that would have made
Halcyone shrink if she had known.

Mabel was magnificently patronizing and talked a jargon of fashionable
slang which Halcyone hardly understood. Some transient gleam of her
beloved mother kept suggesting itself to her when Mabel smiled. The
memory was not distinct enough for her to know what it was, but it hurt
her. The big, bouncing, overdeveloped girl had so little of the
personality which she had treasured all these years as of her
mother--treasured even more than remembered.

Ethel had no faintest look of La Sarthe, and was a nice, jolly, ordinary
young person--dear to her father's heart.

At last they left Halcyone alone with Priscilla, and presently the two
threw themselves into each other's arms--for the old nurse was crying
bitterly now, rocking herself to and fro.

"Ah! how it all comes back to me, my lamb," she sobbed. "He's just the
same, only older. Hard and kind and generous and never understanding a
thing that mattered to your poor, beautiful mother. Oh! she was glad to
go at the end, but for leaving you. Dear lady!--all borne to pay your
father's debts, which Mr. Anderton had took up. I can't never forgive
him quite--I can't never."

And Halcyone, overcome with her long strain of emotion, cried, too, for
a few minutes before she could resume her stern self-control.

But at dinner