mall staff of
servants, and to call daily and order the household until all wheels
were on their tracks. Mrs. Hofer delightedly agreed to be the social
sponsor of Lady Victoria Gwynne, and issued invitations at once for a
tea and a dinner; and Gwynne, who had been half indifferent to
rebuilding on the San Francisco property, immediately began holding long
interviews with bankers, lawyers, architects, and contractors. The law
required him to give but thirty days' notice to his tenants, well-to-do
workmen; and if all went well the building might be finished in seven
months. Lady Victoria evinced something like a renewed interest in life
when told that by the following winter her income would be increased;
and trebled as soon as the large revenue from the building had paid off
the mortgage. Her son offered to place his own share at her disposal
until her debts were paid, but to this she would not listen. He found
her maternal affection undimmed, but other changes in her which he was
far too masculine to understand, and after she was fairly settled and
apparently content, he dismissed feminine idiosyncrasies from his
overburdened mind. He had neglected his studies long enough, and it was
time to begin his amateur practice in Judge Leslie's office, to say
nothing of the bi-weekly lecture at the State University at Berkeley,
which, with the journeys, consumed the day.

Isabel's feminine soul took a far more abiding interest in the subtle
changes of that complicated modern evolution whose special arrangement
of particles was labelled Victoria Gwynne. She bore little external
traces of her illness, and when Isabel congratulated her upon so
complete a recovery, she looked as blank as if memory had failed her.
Isabel had encountered this truly British attitude before, and
experienced none of the irritation of several of the Englishwoman's new
acquaintances when insisting upon the beneficence of the San Francisco
climate. But it was not long before Isabel discerned that under that
sphinx-like exterior the older woman was intensely nervous, that once or
twice even her splendid breeding could not control an outburst of
irritability. Her eyes, too, had a curious hard opaque look, as if the
old voluptuous fires had burned out; and she seemed ever on her guard.
What her future plans were no man could guess. She might have settled
down for life on Russian Hill, so completely did she make the new
environment fit her imperious person. She