about your mother's length."

She tried to speak carelessly, for though she did not concur in the
popular belief that to ignore sorrow is to assuage it, her social
instinct, which was as strongly developed as Mrs. Pendleton's,
encouraged her to throw a pleasant veil over affliction.

"You're looking pale for want of air, Jinny," she added, after a minute
in which she had thought, "The child has broken so in the last few days
that she looks years older than Oliver."

"I'm trying to make her go driving," said Mrs. Pendleton, leaning
forward over the open page of her Bible.

"But I can't go, mother; I haven't the heart for it," replied Virginia,
choking down a sob.

"I don't like to see you looking so badly, dear. You must keep up your
strength for the children's sake, you know."

"Yes, I know," answered Virginia, but her voice had a weary sound.

A little later, when Miss Priscilla had gone, and Oliver came in to urge
her to go with him, she shook her head again, still palely resolute,
still softly obstinate.

"But, Jinny, it isn't right for you to let your health go," he urged.
"You haven't had a breath of air for days and you're getting sallow."

His own colour was as fine as ever; he grew handsomer, if a trifle
stouter, as he grew older; and at thirty-five there was all the vigour
and the charm of twenty in his face and manner. In one way only he had
altered, and of this alteration, he, as well as Virginia, was beginning
faintly to be aware. Comfort was almost imperceptibly taking the place
of conviction, and the passionate altruism of youth would yield before
many years to the prudential philosophy of middle-age. Life had defeated
him. His best had been thrown back at him, and his nature, embittered by
failure, was adjusting itself gradually to a different and a lower
standard of values. Though he could not be successful, it was still
possible, even within the narrow limits of his income and his
opportunities, to be comfortable. And, like other men who have lived day
by day with heroically unselfish women, he had fallen at last into the
habit of thinking that his being comfortable was, after all, a question
of supreme importance to the universe. Deeply as he had felt the
rector's death, he, in common with the rest of Dinwiddie, was conscious
of breathing more easily after the funeral was over. To his
impressionable nature, alternations of mood were almost an essential of
being, and there was something intol