, Mrs. Bassett had been flattering
herself, argued for Mrs. Owen's increasing interest in herself and her
family. The immediate arrival of the Keltons was disquieting.

Through most of her life Hallie Bassett had assumed that she and her
children, as Sally Owen's next of kin, quite filled the heart of that
admirable though often inexplicable woman. Mrs. Bassett had herself
inherited a small fortune from her father, Blackford F. Singleton, Mrs.
Owen's brother, a judge of the Indiana Supreme Court and a senator in
Congress, whose merits and services are set forth in a tablet at the
portal of the Fraser County Court-House. The Bassetts and the Singletons
had been early settlers of that region, and the marriage of Hallie
Singleton to Morton Bassett was a satisfactory incident in the history
of both families. Six years of Mrs. Bassett's girlhood had been passed
in Washington; the thought of power and influence was dear to her; and
nothing in her life had been more natural than the expectation that her
children would enjoy the fortune Mrs. Owen had been accumulating so long
and, from all accounts, by processes hardly less than magical. Mrs.
Bassett's humor was not always equal to the strain to which her aunt
subjected it. Hallie Bassett had, in fact, little humor of any sort. She
viewed life with a certain austerity, and in literature she had
fortified herself against the shocks of time. Conduct, she had read, is
three fourths of life; and Wordsworth had convinced her that the world
is too much with us. Mrs. Bassett discussed nothing so ably as a vague
something she was fond of characterizing as "the full life," and this
she wished to secure for her children. Her boy's future lay properly
with his father; she had no wish to meddle with it; but Marian was the
apple of her eye, and she was striving by all the means in her power to
direct her daughter into pleasant paths and bright meadows where the
"full life" is assured. Hers were no mean standards. She meant to be a
sympathetic and helpful wife, the wisest and most conscientious of
mothers.

Mrs. Bassett was immensely anxious to please her aunt in all ways; but
that intrepid woman's pleasure was not a thing to be counted on with
certainty. She not only sought to please her aunt by every means
possible, but she wished her children to intrench themselves strongly in
their great aunt's favor. The reports of such of Mrs. Owen's public
benefactions as occasionally reached the new