est, for the sake of
keeping her along."

"The mortgage was for too large a sum. I doubt if the old house could
sell to-day for enough to clear it, anyhow." These were some of the
suggestions which the devil kept whispering into Stephen's ear, in these
long hours of perplexity and misgiving. It was a question of casuistry
which might, perhaps, have puzzled a finer moral sense than Stephen's. Why
should he treat old Mrs. Jacobs with any more consideration than he would
show to a man under the same circumstances? To be sure, she was a helpless
old woman; but so was his own mother, and surely his first duty was to
make her as comfortable as possible.

Luckily for old Mrs. Jacobs, a tenant appeared for the "south wing." A
friend of Stephen's, a young clergyman living in a seaport town on Cape
Cod, had written to him, asking about the house, which he knew Stephen was
anxious to rent. He made these inquiries on behalf of two women,
parishioners of his, who were obliged to move to some inland town on
account of the elder woman's failing health. They were mother and
daughter, but both widows. The younger woman's marriage had been a
tragically sad one, her husband having died suddenly, only a few days
after their marriage. She had returned at once to her mother's house,
widowed at eighteen; "heart-broken," the young clergyman wrote, "but the
most cheerful person in this town,--the most cheerful person I ever knew;
her smile is the sunniest and most pathetic thing I ever saw."

Stephen welcomed most gladly the prospect of such tenants as these. The
negotiations were soon concluded; and at the time of the beginning of our
story the two women were daily expected.

A strange feverishness of desire to have them arrive possessed Stephen's
mind. He longed for it, and yet he dreaded it. He liked the stillness of
the house; he felt a sense of ownership of the whole of it: both of these
satisfactions were to be interfered with now. But he had a singular
consciousness that some new element was coming into his life. He did not
define this; he hardly recognized it in its full extent; but if a
bystander could have looked into his mind, following the course of his
reverie distinctly, as an unbiassed outsider might, he would have said,
"Stephen, man, what is this? What are these two women to you, that your
imagination is taking these wild and superfluous leaps into their
history?"

There was hardly a possible speculation as to their past h