been with the Jesuits at Georgetown, with the
Christian Brothers at Manhattan; the sectarian Mt. St. Mary's and the
severely secular Annapolis had both been tried, and proved misfits.
The young man was home again now, and save that his name had become
Theodore, he appeared in no wise changed from the beautiful, wilful,
bold, and showy boy who had gone away in his teens. He was still rather
small for his years, but so gracefully moulded in form, and so perfectly
tailored, that the fact seemed rather an advantage than otherwise.
He never dreamed of going near the wagon-works, but he did go a good
deal--in fact, most of the time--to the Nedahma Club. His mother spoke
often to her friends about her fears for his health. He never spoke to
his friends about his mother at all.

The second Mrs. Madden did not, indeed, appeal strongly to the family
pride. She had been a Miss Foley, a dress-maker, and an old maid.
Jeremiah had married her after a brief widowerhood, principally
because she was the sister of his parish priest, and had a considerable
reputation for piety. It was at a time when the expansion of his
business was promising certain wealth, and suggesting the removal to
Octavius. He was conscious of a notion that his obligations to social
respectability were increasing; it was certain that the embarrassments
of a motherless family were. Miss Foley had shown a good deal of
attention to his little children. She was not ill-looking; she bore
herself with modesty; she was the priest's sister--the niece once
removed of a vicar-general. And so it came about.

Although those most concerned did not say so, everybody could see from
the outset the pity of its ever having come about at all. The pious
and stiffly respectable priest's sister had been harmless enough as
a spinster. It made the heart ache to contemplate her as a wife.
Incredibly narrow-minded, ignorant, suspicious, vain, and sour-tempered,
she must have driven a less equable and well-rooted man than Jeremiah
Madden to drink or flight. He may have had his temptations, but they
made no mark on the even record of his life. He only worked the harder,
concentrating upon his business those extra hours which another sort of
home-life would have claimed instead. The end of twenty years found him
a rich man, but still toiling pertinaciously day by day, as if he had
his wage to earn. In the great house which had been built to please, or
rather placate, his wife, he kept to him