d lacking in physical vigor for
some weeks, and whose symptoms culminated in a slight paralysis, which
confined him to his bed for a month, and to his house during the
remainder of the autumn. Selma rejoiced in this opportunity to develop
her capacities as a nurse, to prove how adequate she would have been to
take complete charge of her late husband, had Dr. Page chosen to trust
her. She administered with scrupulous regularity to the invalid such
medicines as were ordered, and kept him cheerful by reading and
conversation, so that the physician in charge complimented her on her
proficiency. Trained nurses were unknown in Benham at this time, and any
old or unoccupied female was regarded as qualified to watch over the
sick. Selma appreciated from what she had observed of the conduct of
Wilbur's nurse that there was a wrong and a right way of doing things,
but she blamed Dr. Page for his failure to appreciate instinctively that
she was sure to do things suitably. It seemed to her that he had lacked
the intuitive gift to discern latent capabilities--a fault of which the
Benham practitioner proved blameless.

From the large, sunny chamber in which Mr. Parsons slowly recovered some
portion of his vitality, Selma could discern the distant beginnings of
Wetmore College, pleasantly situated on an elevation well beyond the
city limits on the further side of the winding river. An architect had
been engaged to carry out Wilbur's plans, and she watched the outlines
of the new building gradually take shape during the convalescence of her
benefactor. She recognized that the college would be theoretically a
noble addition to the standing of Benham as a city of intellectual and
aesthetic interests, but it provoked her to think that its management was
in the hands of Mrs. Hallett Taylor and her friends, between whom and
herself she felt that a chasm of irreconcilable differences of opinion
existed. Mrs. Taylor had not called on her since her return. She
believed that she was glad of this, and hoped that some of the severely
indignant criticism which she had uttered in regard to the Reform Club
movement had reached her ears. Or was Mrs. Taylor envious of her return
to Benham as the true mistress of this fine establishment on the River
Drive, so superior to her own? Nevertheless, it would have suited Selma
to have been one of the trustees of this new college--her husband's
handiwork in the doing of which he had laid down his promising life