like the Dolly Tracy, who once
did her own work and ate griddle cakes from her own kitchen stove, as a
person well could be. Everything had gone well with her, and scarcely a
sorrow had touched her, for though poor, stupid Jack had slept for five
years in the Tracy lot with only the woman of the Tramp House for
company, he was so near an imbecile when he died that his death was a
blessing rather than otherwise. Tom, with his fine figure, his
fastidious tastes, and aristocratic notions, was the apple of her eye,
and _tout a fait au fait_, she said, when her French fever was at its
height and she wished to impress her hearers with her knowledge of the
language; while, except for her ill-health, and the bad taste she
manifested in her liking for Harold's society, Maude was _tout a fait au
fait_, too. She had no dread of Gretchen, now; even Arthur had ceased to
talk of her, and was as a rule very quiet and contented.

Only her husband troubled her, for with the passing years his silence
and abstraction had increased, until now it was nothing remarkable for
him to go days without speaking to any one unless he were first spoken
to. His hair was white as snow, and made him look years older than he
really was; while the habit he had of always walking with his head down,
and a stoop in his shoulders, added to his apparent years.

During the time Maude was in Europe he grew old very fast, for Maude was
all that made life endurable. To see her in her young beauty, flitting
about the house and grounds like a bright bird, whose nest is high up in
some sheltered spot where the storms never come, was some compensation
for what he had done; but when she was gone there came over him such a
sense of loneliness and desolation that at times he feared lest he
should become crazier than his brother, who really appeared to be
improving, although the strange forgetfulness of past events still clung
to and increased upon him. He did not now remember ever to have said
that Gretchen was with him in the ship or on the train, or that he had
sent the carriage so many times to meet her; and when be spoke of her,
which he seldom did to any one except to Jerrie, it was as of one who
had died years ago. Occasionally, in the winter, when a wild storm was
raging like that which had shaken the house and bent the evergreens the
night Jerrie came, he would tie a knot of crape upon the picture, but
would give no reason for it when questioned except to say, 'C