od and watched the little figure holding tight to Ranald
with one hand, and with the other waving frantically his bonnet by the
tails, till at last the bush hid him from her sight. Then she turned
back again to the house that seemed so empty, with her hand pressed hard
against her side and her lip quivering as with sharp pain.

"How foolish!" she said, impatiently to herself; "he will be home in two
days." But in spite of herself she went again to the door, and looked
long at the spot where the bush swallowed up the road. Then she went
upstairs and shut her door, and when she came down again there was that
in her face that told that her heart had had its first touch of the
sword that, sooner or later, must pierce all mothers' hearts.

CHAPTER VII

MAIMIE

Before Hughie came back from the sugar camp, the minister had returned
from the presbytery, bringing with him his wife's niece, Maimie St.
Clair, who had come from her home in a Western city to meet him. Her
father, Eugene St. Clair, was president of Raymond and St. Clair Lumber
Company. Nineteen years before this time he had married Mrs. Murray's
eldest sister, and established his home with every prospect of a
prosperous and happy life, but after three short, bright years of almost
perfect joy, his young wife, his heart's idol, after two days' illness,
fluttered out from her beautiful home, leaving with her broken-hearted
husband her little boy and a baby girl two weeks old. Then Eugene St.
Clair besought his sister to come out from England and preside over his
home and care for his children; and that he might forget his grief, he
gave himself, heart and mind, to his business. Wealth came to him, and
under his sister's rule his home became a place of cultured elegance and
a center of fashionable pleasure.

Miss Frances St. Clair was a woman of the world, proud of her
family-tree, whose root disappeared in the depths of past centuries, and
devoted to the pursuit and cultivation of those graces and manners that
are supposed to distinguish people of birth and breeding from the common
sort. Indeed, from common men and things she shrank almost with horror.
The entrance of "trade" into the social sphere of her life she would
regard as an impertinent intrusion. It was as much as she could bear
to allow the approach of "commerce," which her brother represented. She
supposed, of course, there must be people to carry on the trades and
industries of the country--very