he homeless woman, as well as the record
of a growing self-reliance. If Mary Ellen were happy or not none might
say, yet surely she was dutiful and kind; and gradually, with something
of the leadership she had learned in her recent life, she slipped into
practical domestic command of this quiet but punctilious _menage_. By
reason of an equal executive fitness Aunt Lucy rose in the kitchen also
into full command. The Widow Clayton found her cousin Mary Ellen a
stay and comfort, useful and practical to a degree unknown in the
education of the Southern young lady of the time.

Of her life in the West Mary Ellen spoke but little, though never with
harshness, and at times almost with wistfulness. Her history had
seemed too full of change to be reality. For the future she made no
plans. It seemed to her to be her fate ever to be an alien, a
looker-on. The roses drooped across her lattice, and the blue grass
stood cool and soft and deep beyond her window, and the kind air
carried the croon of the wooing mocking bird; yet there persisted in
her brain the picture of a wide, gray land, with the sound of an urgent
wind singing in the short, tufted grasses, and the breath of a summons
ever on the air. Out there upon the Plains it had been ever morning.
Here life seemed ever sinking toward its evening-tide.

This old family and the family house were accepted unquestioningly by
the quiet Southern community now, as they had ever been, as a part of
the aristocracy of the land, and as appurtenances there-to. The way of
life had little change. The same grooms led out the horses from the
stables, the same slow figures cut the grass upon the lawn. Yet no
longer were the doors thrown open upon a sea of light and colour. The
horses were groomed and broken, but they brought no great carriage of
state sweeping up the drive between the lion-headed pillars of the
gateway. When Mrs. Clayton feebly sought to propose brighter ways of
life for the young woman, the latter told her gently that for her, too,
life was planned and done, the struggle over, and that she asked only
that she might rest, and not take up again any questions for
readjustment.

"You will change after a while, honey," said her protectress; but Mary
Ellen only smiled. It was enough to rest here in this haven, safe from
the surging seas of doubt and hope and fear, of love and self-distrust.
Let it be settled. Let it be ended. Let these tall white columns mark
the