and began to talk on indifferent subjects; but he replied with ill-
disguised impatience, for he had not come to chatter and gossip. She
fully understood this; but it pleased her to check and provoke him and
she did it in a way which vividly reminded him of his early days, of the
desolation and unhappiness that had blighted his young life when this
woman had taken the place of his own tender gentle mother, and come
between him and his father. Day after day, in that bygone time, she had
received him just as she had this evening: with words that sounded
kindly, but with a cold, unloving heart. He knew that she had always
seen his boyish errors and petty faults in the worst light, attributing
them to bad propensities and innate wickedness, that she had injured him
in his father's eyes by painting a distorted image of his disposition and
doings--and all these sins he could not forgive her. At the time of his
father's assassination Demetrius was already grown to man's estate, and
as the eldest son it would have been his right and duty to take part with
his uncle Porphyrius in the management of the business; but he could not
endure the idea of living in the same place with his stepmother, so,
having a pronounced taste for a country life, he left the widow in
possession of the house in the Canopic street, persuaded his uncle to pay
over his father's share in the business in hard cash and then had quitted
Alexandria to take entire charge of the family estates in Cyrenaica.
In the course of a few years he had become an admirable farmer; the
landowners throughout the province were glad to take his advice or follow
his example, and the accounts which he now laid on the table by the side
of Mary's couch--three goodly rolls--proved by the irrefragable evidence
of figures that he had actually doubled their revenues from the estates
of which he had been the manager. He had earned his right to claim his
independence, to persist in his own determinations and to go his own way;
he was animated by the pride of an independent nature that recklessly
breaks away from a detested tie when it has means at command either to