years of habit he liked to jog about alone, revolving in his mind
his business affairs--counting in fancy his big bundles of
securities, one by one, calculating their returns past, present
and prospective--reviewing the various enterprises in which he
was dominant factor, working out schemes for getting more profit
here, for paying less wages there, for tightening his grip upon
this enterprise, for dumping his associates in that, for escaping
with all the valuable assets from another. His appearance, as he
and his nag dozed along the highroad, was as deceptive as that of
a hive of bees on a hot day--no signs of life except a few sleepy
workers crawling languidly in and out at the low, broad
crack-door, yet within myriads toiling like mad.

Jane went up to dress. She had brought an Italian maid with her
from Florence, and a mass of baggage that had given the station
loungers at Remsen City something to talk about, when there was a
dearth of new subjects, for the rest of their lives. She had
transformed her own suite in the second story of the big old
house into an appearance of the quarters of a twentieth century
woman of wealth and leisure. In the sitting room were books in
four languages; on the walls were tasteful reproductions of her
favorite old masters. The excellence of her education was
attested not by the books and pictures but by the absence of
those fussy, commonplace draperies and bits of bric-a-brac
where-- with people of no taste and no imagination furnish their
houses because they can think of nothing else to fill in the
gaps.

Many of Jane's ways made Sister Martha uneasy. For Martha, while
admitting that Jane through superior opportunity ought to know,