wed
another. I didn't suspect that you felt this way. Come, I'll try to brace
up." He pressed her to him. "Don't feel badly. You're overwrought. You've
exaggerated the situation, Honora. We'll go in on the eight o'clock train
together and look at the house--although I'm afraid it's a little steep,"
he added cautiously.

"I don't care anything about the house," said Honora. "I don't want it."

"There!" he said soothingly, "you'll feel differently in the morning.
We'll go and look at it, anyway."

Her quick ear, however, detected an undertone which, if not precisely
resentment, was akin to the vexation that an elderly gentleman might be
justified in feeling who has taken the same walk for twenty years, and is
one day struck by a falling brick. Howard had not thought of consulting
her in regard to remaining all winter in Quicksands. And, although he
might not realize it himself, if he should consent to go to New York one
reason for his acquiescence would be that the country in winter offered a
more or less favourable atmosphere for the recurrence of similar
unpleasant and unaccountable domestic convulsions. Business demands peace
at any price. And the ultimatum at Rivington, though delivered in so
different a manner, recurred to him.

The morning sunlight, as is well known, is a dispeller of moods, a
disintegrator of the night's fantasies. It awoke Honora at what for her
was a comparatively early hour, and as she dressed rapidly she heard her
husband whistling in his room. It is idle to speculate on the phenomenon
taking place within her, and it may merely be remarked in passing that
she possessed a quality which, in a man, leads to a career and fame.
Unimagined numbers of America's women possess that quality--a fact that
is becoming more and more apparent every day.

"Why, Honora!" Howard exclaimed, as she appeared at the breakfast table.
"What's happened to you?"

"Have you forgotten already," she asked, smilingly, as she poured out her
coffee, "that we are going to town together?"

He readjusted his newspaper against the carafe.

"How much do you think Mrs. Farnham--or Mrs. Rindge--is worth?" he asked.

"I'm sure I don't know," she replied.

"Old Marshall left her five million dollars."

"What has that to do with it?" inquired Honora.

"She isn't going to rent, especially in that part of town, for nothing."

"Wouldn't it be wiser, Howard, to wait and see the house. You know you
proposed it yourself, and i