scue it. To oversee the
cooking was not his duty. No autocrat ever reigned with more absolute
power than did Martin Howe; and no monarch ever maintained a more sincere
faith in his divine right to rule. He simply set the crown of sovereignty
upon his own brows because he believed it to belong there. And had his
faith in his destiny wavered, there were always his slaves Mary, Eliza,
and Jane to bow their foreheads in the dust at his feet and murmur with
true Oriental submissiveness:

Oh, King, Live Forever!

His lordship being thus acknowledged, was it any wonder that Martin cast
about himself a mantle of aloofness and dignity and rated as trivial the
household routine and petty gossip of his sisters? When he listened to
their chatter at all it was with the tolerance of a superior being toward
a less intelligent rabble.

Hence when he returned from the field one night and was greeted by the
breathless announcement that a strange young woman with her trunk had just
arrived at the Websters', it was characteristic of him to quiet the
excited outburst of his sisters with the chilling and stately reply:

"What does it matter to us who she is, or what she's come for? Ellen
Webster's visitors are no concern of ours."

CHAPTER III

LUCY

In the meantime the being whom Martin had dismissed with this majestic
wave of his hand stood in the middle of the Webster kitchen, confronting
the critical eyes of its mistress.

"Yes, Aunt Ellen," the girl was saying, catching the elder woman's stiff
fingers in hers, "I'm Lucy. Do you think I look like Dad? And am I at all
what you expected?"

Ellen drew her hands uncomfortably from the impulsive grasp but did not
reply immediately. She was far too bewildered to do so.

Lucy was not in the least what she had expected,--that was certain. In the
delicate oval face there was no trace of Thomas's heavily modeled
features; nor was Lucy indebted to the Websters for her aureole of golden
hair, the purity of her blond skin, or her grave brown eyes. Thomas had
been a massively formed, kindly, plain-featured man; but his daughter was
beautiful. Even Ellen, who habitually scoffed at all that was fair and
banished the aesthetic world as far from her horizon as possible, was
forced to acknowledge this.

In the proudly poised head, the small, swiftly moving hands, and the tiny
feet there was a birdlike alertness which was the epitome of action. The
supple body,