preside at the head
of the table. Tell Jerome that I shall sit there in future. And now I
wish you to take me through the house that I may know more of its
appointments than I have thus far been able to learn."

Without a word Harrison led the way into the hall, and up the beautiful
old colonial stairway.

Peggy's sitting-room and bed-room were situated at the south-east corner
of the house overlooking the bay. Back of her bath and dressing-rooms
were two guest rooms. A broad hall ran the length of the second story
and upon the opposite side of it had been Mrs. Neil Stewart's pretty
sitting-room, which corresponded with Peggy's and her bed-room separated
from her husband's by the daintiest of dressing and bath-rooms. Neil
Stewart's "den" was at the rear. Beyond were lavatories, linen-room,
house-maid's room and every requirement of a well-ordered home.

Mrs. Peyton began by entering Peggy's sitting-room, a liberty she had
not hitherto taken, but she felt pretty sure Peggy was not in the house.
At any rate she had made her plunge and did not mean to be diverted from
her object now. Martha Harrison was simply boiling with wrath at the
intrusion.

"You are a wonderfully capable woman, Martha. I see I shall have very
light duties," was Mrs. Peyton's patronizing comment.

"_Harrison_, if you please, ma'am," emphasized that person.

"Oh, indeed? As you prefer. Now let me see the rooms on the opposite
side of the hall."

Perhaps had Mrs. Peyton asked Harrison to lead her into the little
mausoleum, built generations ago in the whispering white pine grove upon
the hill back of the house, it could not have been a greater liberty or
sacrilege. Not so great, possibly. In all the nine years nothing had
been changed. They were sacred to the entire household and especially
sacred to Harrison who had held it her especial privilege to keep them
immaculate. In the bed-room the toilet and dressing tables held the same
articles Mrs. Neil had used; her work-table stood in the same sunny
window. In the sitting-room the books she loved and had read again and
again were in the case, or lying upon the tables where she had left
them. It seemed as though she might have stepped from the room barely
ten minutes before. There was nothing depressing about it. On the
contrary, it impressed upon the observer the near presence of a sweet,
cultivated personality. The sitting-room was a shrine for both Peggy and
her father, and it was his wish th