--the flustered maid,
tousled, grubby, her frock gaping--the horrible hall, with its
imitation-marble paper and staring linoleum--the prim, trivial,
unaired, unused drawing-room, with its pathetic attempts at
elegance--Deb inwardly curled up at the sight of these things as things
now belonging to the family. When the master of the house came hurrying
in to her, rusty, unshaven, abject, she would have changed places with
a Christian of old Rome facing a lion of the amphitheatre.

"Oh, this is good of you! This is kind indeed!" Mr Goldsworthy greeted
her, and threatened in his grateful emotion to fall at her feet. "I did
not dare to hope--"

But Deb shudderingly swept him aside, with his gratitude and his
excuses and his timid justifications. He could stand up before his
other critics--he had a clear conscience, he said; but before her he
knew himself for what he was. He followed her like a dog to Mary's
room, obeyed her directions like a slave, wept when she consented to
"say no more", and stooped to beg from him a solemn vow and promise
that he would be good to his wife. This was after the doctors had
refused to permit his wife's removal to Redford to be nursed, and after
Redford had practically been in command of his establishment for seven
weeks.

Christmas is the time for reconciliations, and by Christmas Mary was
convalescent--pale as she had never been since childhood, and wearing a
little cap over her shaved head; very humble and gentle, and strangely
docile in her attitude towards her captor, who now gave himself all the
airs of a husband of his class. He was the benevolent despot of his
women-kind--the god of the machine; she was as properly submissive as
if born in the ranks. Negatively so, that is to say; positively, her
manifestations of duty to him took the form of services and endearments
bestowed upon his child and sister. Her first occupation after she
could use her hands was to improve Ruby's wardrobe--the little girl,
now her own, appealed to her motherly heart, a saving interest in her
wrecked life. The poor old ex-housekeeper was the other prop to which
she clung for a footing in the new and alien world which was now all
her home. When Miss Goldsworthy proposed to go out into a situation,
not to "be in the way of" the new wife, and when her brother would have
approved the plan as only right and proper (and as facilitating his
schemes for the raising of the "tone" of his establishment to Redford
le