"Mother has been a dear, splendid martyr. Nobody would have guessed she
was lonely, but--we knew!"

"She couldn't possibly have been more lonely than I. Next time I'll take
her with me!" was the emphatic response.

Then the whole group swept by the library door, down the hall, and into
the room of the great fireplace. Nobody looked his way, and Richard
Kendrick had one swift view of them all. Vigorous young men, graceful
young women, a child or two, the mother of them all on the arm of her
husband--there were plenty to choose from, but he could not find the one
he looked for. Then, quite by itself, another figure flashed past him.
He had a glimpse of a dusky mass of hair, of a piquant profile, of a
round arm bared to the elbow. As the figure passed the hat-tree he saw
the arm reach out and catch the rose-coloured scarf, flinging it over
one shoulder. Then the whole vision had vanished, and he stood alone in
the library doorway, with Judge Gray saying behind him: "I cannot find
the clipping. I will mail it to your grandfather when I come upon it."

"I knew that scarf was hers," Richard was thinking as he went out into
the night by way of the rear door, Judge Gray having accompanied him to
the threshold and given him a cordial hand of farewell. What a voice!
She could make a fortune with it on the stage, if she couldn't sing a
note. The stage! What had the stage to do with people who lived together
in a place like that?

He looked curiously back at the house as he went down the box-bordered
path which led, curving, from it to the street. It was obviously one of
the old-time mansions of the big city, preserved in the midst of its
grounds in a neighbourhood now rampant with new growth. It was outside,