suddenly a clearer
vision for the depths of human love and pity which are beneath the
coarse and the common. When Fanny stood beside her daughter and
looked at her, then at Robert, with the reflection of the beautiful
young face in her eyes of love, she became at once pathetic and
sacred.

"It is all natural," he said to himself as he was going home.

Chapter XX

Robert Lloyd when he came to Rowe was confronted with one of the
hardest tasks in the world, that of adjustment to circumstances
which had hitherto been out of his imagination. He had not dreamed
of a business life in connection with himself. Though he had always
had a certain admiration for his successful uncle, Norman Lloyd, yet
he had always had along with the admiration a recollection of the
old tale of the birthright and the mess of pottage. He had expected
to follow the law, like his father, but when he had finished
college, about two years after his father's death, he had to face
the unexpected. The stocks in which the greater part of the elder
Lloyd's money had been invested had depreciated; some of them were
for the time being quite worthless as far as income was concerned.
There were two little children--girls--by his father's second
marriage, and there was not enough to support them and their mother
and allow Robert to continue his reading for the law. So he pursued,
without the slightest hesitation, but with bitter regret, the only
course which he saw open before him. He wrote to his uncle Norman,
and was welcomed to a position in his factory with more warmth than
he had ever seen displayed by him. In fact, Norman Lloyd, who had no
son of his own, saw with a quickening of his pulses the handsome
young fellow of his own race who had in a measure thrown himself
upon his protection. He had never shared his wife's longing for
children as children, and had never cared for Robert when a child;
but now, when he was a man grown and bore his name, he appealed to
him.

Norman Lloyd was supposed to be heaping up riches, and wild stories
of his wealth were told in Rowe. He gave large sums to public
benefactions, and never stinted his wife in her giving within
certain limits. It would have puzzled any one when faced with facts
to understand why he had the name of a hard man, but he had it,
whether justly or not. "He's as hard as nails," people said. His
employes hated him--that is, the more turbulent and undisciplined
spirits hated him, and the o