The event was duly announced in the leading newspapers, and in the course
of a few days a copy of the _Times_ containing the insertion started
eastward to meet Seymour Michael on his way home from India.

Anna Agar came home to Stagholme to begin her new life; for which
peaceful groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for she
had breathed the fatal air of Clapham since her birth. This atmosphere is
terribly impregnated with the microbe of bourgeoisie.

But the novelty of the great house had that all-absorbing fascination
exercised over shallow minds by anything that is new. At first she
maintained excitedly that there was no life like a country life--no
centre more suited for such an ideal existence than Stagholme. For a time
she forgot Seymour Michael; but love is eminently deceitful. It lies in a
comatose silence for many years and then suddenly springs to life.
Sometimes the long period of rest has strengthened it--sometimes the time
has been passed in a chrysalis stage from which Love awakens to find
itself changed into Hatred.

Little Jem, her stepson--sturdy, fair, silent--was her first failure.

"Come to your mother, dear," she said, with unguarded enthusiasm one
afternoon when there were callers in the room.

"I cannot go to my mother," replied the youthful James, with his mouth
full of cake, "because she is dead."

There was an uncompromising matter-of-factness about this simple
statement, made in all good faith and honesty, which warned the second