“You will have to imagine yourself my daughter,” she said. “You are taller, but the colouring was the same. You won’t mind, will you?” Flossie’s young man was whisked away. Joan, who had seated herself in a small chair, was alone for a few minutes.!

“It’s wonderful how like you are to your mother,” he said, “I wish I were as young as I feel.” The young man looked at him and smiled.

The suggestion that was forcing itself into her brain was monstrous—unthinkable. That, never possessed of any surplus vitality, and suffering from the added lassitude of illness, the woman should have become indifferent—willing to let a life that to her was full of fears and difficulties slip peacefully away from her, that was possible. But that she should exercise thought and ingenuity—that she should have reasoned the thing out and deliberately laid her plans, calculating at every point on their success; it was inconceivable. “They did, at first,” he answered. “The time-servers and the hypocrites among them. I made it a condition that they should be teetotallers, and chapel goers, and everything else that I thought good for them. I thought that I could save their souls by bribing them with cheap rents and share of profits. And then the union came, and that of course finished it.” “Very beautiful,” he answered, “in the beginning.”