s that their presence
only too often denied. His years abroad had given him a picture of his
mother and sister that the few weeks of his return had already dimmed
and obscured. His mother's weekly letters had, during ten long years,
built up an image of her as the dearest old lady in the world. He had
always, since a child, seen her in a detached way--his deep and
permanent relations had been with his father--but those letters, of
which he had now a deep and carefully cherished pile, gave him a most
charming picture of her. They had not been clever nor deep nor indeed
very interesting, but they had been affectionate and tender with all
the gentleness of the figure that he remembered sitting in its lace cap
beside the fire.

After three weeks of home life he was compelled to confess that he did
not in the least understand his mother. His intuitions about people
were not in fact of a very penetrating character.

His mother appeared to all her world as a "sweet old lady," but even
Martin could already perceive that was not in the least what she really
was. He had seen her old hands tremble with suppressed temper on the
very day after his arrival; he had seen her old lips white with anger
because the maid had brought her the wrong shawl. Old ladies must of
course have their fancies, but his mother had some fixed and fierce
purpose in her life that was quite beyond his powers of penetration. It
might of course have something to do with her attachment to his father.
Attached Martin could see that she was, but at the same time completely
and eternally outside her husband's spiritual life. That might have
been perhaps in the first place by her own desire--she did not want "to
be bothered with all that nonsense." But certainly all these years with
him had worked upon her: she was not perhaps so sure now that it was
all "nonsense." She wanted, it might be, a closer alliance with him,
which she could not have because she had once rejected the chance of
it. Martin did not know; he was aware that there was a great deal going
on in the house that he did not fathom. Amy, his sister, knew. There
was an alliance between his mother and his sister deep and strong, as
he could see--he did not yet know that it was founded very largely on
dislike and fear of himself.

How fantastic these theories of fire and passion must seem, he amused
himself by considering, to any one who knew his mother only from the
outside. She was sitting to-day as