ceased
to hate with young intolerance and begun to pity; and before too much
longing for freedom, and its insidious suggestions, had poisoned her
nature. Indeed, when she had seen her father buried with much pomp in
the cemetery behind Rosewater, and returned to the permanent peace of
her home, she missed her cares and responsibilities, so long and
systematically borne, and mourned, not as a child for its parent, but as
an adoptive mother suddenly bereft. Nevertheless, she was bent upon
enjoying her freedom to the utmost and rebelled against the obduracy of
her uncle's executors, who disapproved of her pilgrimage to Europe
unattended by a matron of Rosewater. Hiram Otis, who trusted no man, had
appointed four executors; and had not Judge Leslie been one of them the
other three might have delayed the settling of the estate beyond the
legal term. But at the end of a year Isabel was absolute mistress of her
property and herself.

One of the happiest moments of her life was when she sat before her
lawyer's table in San Francisco and watched the pen strokes that
cancelled the mortgage of the house on Russian Hill. The house and its
acre, encumbered by the inevitable mortgage, had been all that remained
of Mrs. Otis's personal inheritance when she left San Francisco for
ever. James Otis had promised his dying wife that he would never sell
the place, which she bequeathed to Isabel; and when his last client left
him and he could no longer pay the interest, Hiram, who was morosely
devoted to his niece, met the yearly obligation: he would not redeem the
mortgage unless he were permitted to buy the property. But to this James
Otis, clinging to his solitary virtue, would not consent; and Hiram,
although he intended to leave all he possessed to Isabel, could not
bring himself to part with any sum in four figures.

Before leaving for Europe Isabel had leased the house to a young
newspaper man whose wife had an income of her own, and not only an
artistic appreciation of the view, but a more practical esteem for a
site so far removed from the "all-night life" below. Immediately after
Isabel's return Mrs. Glait had asked permission to sublet the house,
remarking cynically that time had inured her to the desultory phenomena
of journalism, but never to the stable prospect of her husband's death
struggle with foot-pads, or her children falling down the cliff of this
wild bit of nature in the heart of a city.

Isabel took back her old h