trees "sat up" for her daughter, Mr. Vertrees having retired
after a restless evening, not much soothed by the society of his
Landseers. Mary had taken a key, insisting that he should not come for
her and seeming confident that she would not lack for escort; nor did
the sequel prove her confidence unwarranted. But Mrs. Vertrees had a
long vigil of it.

She was not the woman to make herself easy--no servant had ever seen her
in a wrapper--and with her hair and dress and her shoes just what they
had been when she returned from the afternoon's call, she sat through
the slow night hours in a stiff little chair under the gaslight in her
own room, which was directly over the "front hall." There, book in hand,
she employed the time in her own reminiscences, though it was her belief
that she was reading Madame de Remusat's.

Her thoughts went backward into her life and into her husband's; and the
deeper into the past they went, the brighter the pictures they brought
her--and there is tragedy. Like her husband, she thought backward
because she did not dare think forward definitely. What thinking forward
this troubled couple ventured took the form of a slender hope which
neither of them could have borne to hear put in words, and yet they
had talked it over, day after day, from the very hour when they heard
Sheridan was to build his New House next door. For--so quickly does
any ideal of human behavior become an antique--their youth was of the
innocent old days, so dead! of "breeding" and "gentility," and no craft
had been more straitly trained upon them than that of talking about
things without mentioning them. Herein was marked the most vital
difference between Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees and their big new neighbor.
Sheridan, though his youth was of the same epoch, knew nothing of such
matters. He had been chopping wood for the morning fire in the country
grocery while they were still dancing.

It was after one o'clock when Mrs. Vertrees heard steps and the delicate
clinking of the key in the lock, and then, with the opening of the door,
Mary's laugh, and "Yes--if you aren't afraid--to-morrow!"

The door closed, and she rushed up-stairs, bringing with her a breath
of cold and bracing air into her mother's room. "Yes," she said, before
Mrs. Vertrees could speak, "he brought me home!"

She let her cloak fall upon the bed, and, drawing an old red-velvet
rocking-chair forward, sat beside her mother after giving her a light
pat upon th