IV


Her parents were secretly relieved. Even Mrs. Dwight's vision of future
prosperity had faded. She had been justified in believing that her sister
Eliza would make a will in favor of her family, but unfortunately Mrs.
Goring had amused herself with speculation in her old age, and had left
barely enough to pay her funeral expenses.

Mrs. Dwight broached the subject of their immediate future to her husband
that evening. She had some time since made up her mind, in case the school
experiment was not a success, to furnish a larger house with what remained
of the legacy, and take boarders.

"I wouldn't do it if Gora had made the friends I hoped for her," she said,
turning the heel of the first of her son's winter socks, "and there's no
such thing as a social come-down for us; for that matter, there is more
than one lady, once wealthy, who is keeping a boarding-house in this town.
Gora will have to work anyhow, and as for Mortimer--" she glanced fondly at
her manly young son, who was amiably playing checkers in the parlor with
his sister, "he is sure to make his fortune."

"I don't know," said Mr. Dwight heavily. "I don't know."

"Why, what do you mean?" asked his wife sharply.

Mrs. Dwight belonged to that type of American women whose passions in youth
are weak and anaemic, not to say exceedingly shame-faced, but which in
mature years become strong and selfish and jealous, either for a lover or a
son. Mrs. Dwight, being a perfectly respectable woman, had centered all the