meant to her, the last touching expression of an inarticulate fidelity:
the utterance of a love which at last had found its formula. Mrs. Peyton
dismissed as morbid any other view of the case. She was annoyed with
herself for supposing that Dick could be ever so remotely affected by the
possibility at which poor Darrow's renunciation hinted. The nature of
the offer removed it from practical issues to the idealizing region of
sentiment.

Mrs. Peyton had been sitting alone with these thoughts for the greater part
of the afternoon, and dusk was falling when Dick entered the drawing-room.
In the dim light, with his pallour heightened by the sombre effect of
his mourning, he came upon her almost startlingly, with a revival of
some long-effaced impression which, for a moment, gave her the sense of
struggling among shadows. She did not, at first, know what had produced the
effect; then she saw that it was his likeness to his father.

"Well--is it over?" she asked, as he threw himself into a chair without
speaking.

"Yes: I've looked through everything." He leaned back, crossing his hands
behind his head, and gazing past her with a look of utter lassitude.

She paused a moment, and then said tentatively: "Tomorrow you will be able
to go back to your work."

"Oh--my work," he exclaimed, as if to brush aside an ill-timed pleasantry.

"Are you too tired?"

"No." He rose and began to wander up and down the room. "I'm not