y the _Ruritania_ on the 3rd. Archie is simply furious
at the hints you're all throwing out about that old man Fay. Perfectly
preposterous, is what he calls them. He seems to think that, once he is
on the spot, he'll be able to show every one that Fay had no possible
reason to want to avenge himself, and must therefore be beyond
suspicion. I must say Archie doesn't strike me as vindictive, which is
another surprise, if one could ever be surprised in a Masterman. They're
all queer, Thor as much as any of them, though he's queer in such
lovable ways. I mean that you never can tell what freaks they'll take,
whether for evil or for good. Nothing would astonish me less than to see
Archie himself in sackcloth and ashes one of these days, and I do
believe that it's the thing he's afraid of himself. What he's fighting
in all this business about Fay is his own impulse to do penance. He's
thinking of the figure he'll cut, wearing a shroud and carrying a
lighted candle. Of course it interests us because--well, because it may
turn out to be a matter of dollars and cents. Not that I count on it.
I've put all that behind me, and I must say that your father and I have
never been so happy together as during these last few months. We get
along perfectly on what we have, and we don't lack for anything. Of
course the way in which your father, the sweet lamb, is improving makes
all the difference in the world to me. So Archie needn't repent on our
account. We've let all that go. It only strikes me as funny the way he
can't do enough for us--taxis at the door the minute we put our noses
out--flowers in the sitting-room--and everything. I know perfectly well
what it means. It isn't _us_. He's simply sacrificing to the hoodoo or
the voodoo that he sees behind us--just like any other Masterman."

She added in a postscript: "You can read Thor as much or as little of my
letters as you choose. I don't care--not a bit! I told him before you
were married that I always intended to speak my mind about his father,
like it or lump it who would."

CHAPTER XXXV

The rest of that year became to Archie Masterman a period of popularity
and triumph, in so far as such terms could be used of a man so sorely
bereaved. Nothing ever sat on him with finer effect than the air of
dignity, charity, and sorrow with which he returned from Europe, while
his stand toward poor old Jasper Fay brought him a degree of sympathy
new even to one whose personality had