about the room.

"Your mother is much better," said Isabel, tentatively.

"Oh yes, and she is looking forward to her motor trip, and telephoned
this morning that her room was a mass of flowers. I fancy she is a bit
touched by so much kindness, for she has not been half decent to any one
but the Trennahans."

"Does she say anything about returning to England? She had it in
mind--just after the earthquake."

"She has made one or two casual allusions to her return, but she never
plans far ahead--does what takes her fancy at the moment. But this life
will never suit her. I imagine she will go before long. London is in her
blood. Now that she can live properly--will have all she can, or ought
to want, when the building is paying, there is no object in her
remaining here."

"How goes the building?"

"How can anything go in this infernal weather? The old shanties are
down, and the contractor had a sort of tent erected and has done some
work on the foundations. I should have come directly to California if I
had had any idea of the money to be made by selling off my superfluous
land and putting up that building. It might be finished, by this time.
Why didn't you tell me?"

"I am only remodelling my own brain on business lines by slow degrees,
and no echo of this building fever reached me in Europe. You will
remember that I did write, while you were wandering about America, that
Mr. Colton suggested it for both of us. If I did not dwell on the
subject it was because I had a feminine horror of the mortgage--and no
idea that you were so keen on making money."

"I am thinking principally of my mother. When a woman has always had the
world I doubt if she can live long out of it. San Francisco is all very
well for the young and adventurous, and for those with a strong sense of
the picturesque, but I can imagine that to a woman of her age and
experience----Do you know--" he burst out. "I don't know where I am.
What an extraordinary thing heredity is! I doubt if most people,
although they would call that a platitude, realize that heredity is
anything more than a telling word. There are times when I am sitting at
my stove, surrounded by all those typical American men, who seldom
mention a subject but politics and farming--for I tabu chickens--or the
intensely local interests, more or less affected by politics,--there are
times when I actually feel the nameless ambitious young fellow--not born
in a log-cabin, perhaps, but next d