other mistress, Miss Corinne, the daughter of the lady whom the
successful Wall Street broker had made his first and only wife.

All this gloomy atmosphere might have been changed for the better
had there been a big, cheery open wood fire snapping and blazing
away, sputtering out its good morning as you entered--and there
would have been if any one of the real inmates had insisted upon
it--fought for it, if necessary; or if in summer one could have
seen through the curtained windows a stretch of green grass with
here and there a tree, or one or two twisted vines craning their
necks to find out what was going on inside; or if in any or all
seasons, a wholesome, happy-hearted, sunny wife looking like a
bunch of roses just out of a bath, had sat behind the smoking
coffee-urn, inquiring whether one or two lumps of sugar would be
enough; or a gladsome daughter who, in a sudden burst of
affection, had thrown her arms around her father's neck and kissed
him because she loved him, and because she wanted his day and her
day to begin that way:--if, I say, there had been all, or one-
half, or one-quarter of these things, the atmosphere of this
sepulchral interior might have been improved--but there wasn't.

There was a wife, of course, a woman two years older than Arthur
Breen--the relict of a Captain Barker, an army officer--who had
spent her early life in moving from one army post to another until
she had settled down in Washington, where Breen had married her,
and where the Scribe first met her. But this sharer of the
fortunes of Breen preferred her breakfast in bed, New York life
having proved even more wearing than military upheavals. And there
was also a daughter, Miss Corinne Barker, Captain and Mrs.
Barker's only offspring, who had known nothing of army posts,