Dom Francisco came almost daily to see the Reverend Orme. "Behold him!"
he cried at his first visit, aghast at the havoc the stroke had played
with the tall frame. "He is but a boy, he has fathered but two
children--and yet--behold him! He is broken!" The sight of the Reverend
Orme, suddenly grown pitifully old, seemed to work on the white-haired,
but sturdy, cattle-king by reflection. He, too, grew old suddenly.

Natalie was the first to notice it. She began to nurse the old man as
she nursed her father,--to treat him as she would a child. When one day
he spoke almost tremulously of the marriage that was to be, she did not
even answer him, contenting herself with the smile with which one humors
extreme youth clamoring for the moon. Gradually, without any discussion
or open refusal on the part of Natalie, it became understood not only to
Dom Francisco, but to all the circle at Nadir, that she would never
marry the old cattle-king.

The sudden departure of Lewis, the Reverend Orme's breakdown, with its
intimate worry displacing all lesser cares, the absorption of Ann
Leighton as her husband's constant attendant--these things made of
Natalie a woman in a night. She assumed direction of the house, and
calmly ordered mammy around in a way that warmed that old soul, born to
cheerful servitude. She hired a goatherd and rigidly oversaw his
handiwork. Then she approached Dom Francisco one evening as he sat at
her father's bedside and told him that he must find a purchaser for the
goats--all of them.

The Reverend Orme, although he heard, took no interest in any temporal
affair. Mrs. Leighton looked up and asked mildly: