he didn't have her down here before," she remarked, with a judicial
air. Her spectacles glittered, and her harsh, florid face bent
severely over the sugar-bowl and the cups and saucers.

The lamp-light was mellow in the neat, homely dining-room, and there
was a soft aroma of boiling tea all about. The pink and white
children ate their peach sauce in happy silence, with their pretty
eyes upon the prospective cake.

"I suppose there must be some bed made up in all that big house,"
remarked their mother; "but it must be awful lonesome."

Of the awful lonesomeness of it truly, this smiling, comfortable
young soul had no conception. At that moment, while they were
drinking their tea and talking her over, Jane Field sat bolt-upright
in one of the old flag-bottomed chairs in the Maxwell sitting-room.
She had dropped into it when the lawyer closed the door after him,
and she never stirred afterward. She sat there all night.

The oil was low in the lamp which the lawyer had lighted, and left
standing on the table between the windows. She could see distinctly
for a while the stately pieces of old furniture standing in their
places against the walls. Just opposite where she sat was one of
lustreless old mahogany, extending the width of the wall between two
doors, rearing itself upon slender legs, set with multitudinous
drawers, and surmounted by a clock. A piece of furniture for which
she knew no name, an evidence of long-established wealth and
old-fashioned luxury, of which she and her plain folk, with their
secretaries and desks and bureaus, had known nothing. The clock had
stopped at three o'clock. Mrs. Field thought to herself that it might