er's house in Gramercy Park. A visit at such an early
hour was unusual, and the old lady looked at him in alarm.

"We are well, mother," he said as she rose. "I called to talk to you
about a little business." Whereupon Madam sat down, and became suddenly
about twenty years younger, for "business" was a word like a watch-cry;
she called all her senses together when it was uttered in her presence.

"Business!" she ejaculated sharply. "Whose business?"

"I think I may say the business of the whole family."

"Nay, I am not in it. My business is just as I want it, and I am not
going to talk about it--one way or the other."

"Is not Rawdon Court of some interest to you? It has been the home and
seat of the family for many centuries. A good many. Mostyn women have
been its mistress."

"I never heard of any Mostyn woman who would not have been far happier
away from Rawdon Court. It was a Calvary to them all. There was little
Nannie Mostyn, who died with her first baby because Squire Anthony
struck her in a drunken passion; and the proud Alethia Mostyn, who
suffered twenty years' martyrdom from Squire John; and Sara, who took
thirty thousand pounds to Squire Hubert, to fling away at the green
table; and Harriet, who was made by her husband, Squire Humphrey, to
jump a fence when out hunting with him, and was brought home crippled
and scarred for life--a lovely girl of twenty who went through agonies
for eleven years without aught of love and help, and died alone while he
was following a fox; and there was pretty Barbara Mostyn----"

"Come, come, mother. I did not call here this morning to hear the
Rawdons abused, and you forget your own marriage. It was a happy one, I
am sure. One Rawdon, at least, must be excepted; and I think I treated
my wife as a good husband ought to treat a wife."

"Not you! You treated Mary very badly."

"Mother, not even from you----"

"I'll say it again. The little girl was dying for a year or more, and
you were so busy making money you never saw it. If she said or looked
a little complaint, you moved restless-like and told her 'she moped too
much.' As the end came I spoke to you, and you pooh-poohed all I said.
She went suddenly, I know, to most people, but she knew it was her last
day, and she longed so to see you, that I sent a servant to hurry you
home, but she died before you could make up your mind to leave your
'cases.' She and I were alone when she whispered her last message for
you--a