and I ought to want to marry him--and I _will_!"

The birds had stopped singing in the noonday heat. The breeze had died
down. Outdoors, in the house, there was not a sound. She felt as if she
must not, could not breathe. The silence, like a stealthy hand, lifted
her from her chair, drew her tiptoeing and breathless toward the room in
which her father was sitting. She paused at its threshold, looked. There
was Hiram, in his chair by the window, bolt upright, eyes open and
gazing into the infinite. Beside that statue of the peace eternal knelt
Ellen, a worn, wan, shrunken figure, the hands clasped, the eyes closed,
the lips moving.

"Mother! Mother!" cried Del.

Her mother did not hear. She was moaning, "I believe, Lord, I believe!
Help Thou my unbelief!"

CHAPTER X

"THROUGH LOVE FOR MY CHILDREN"

On the day after the funeral, Mrs. Ranger and the two children and young
Hargrave were in the back parlor, waiting for Judge Torrey to come and
read the will. The well-meant intrusions, the services, the burial--all
those barbarous customs that stretch on the rack those who really love
the dead whom society compels them publicly to mourn--had left cruel
marks on Adelaide and on Arthur; but their mother seemed unchanged. She
was talking incessantly now, addressing herself to Dory, since he alone
was able to heed her. Her talk was an almost incoherent stream, as if she
neither knew nor cared what she was saying so long as she could keep that
stream going--the stream whose sound at least made the voice in her
heart, the voice of desolation, less clear and terrible, though not less
insistent.

There was the beat of a man's footsteps on the side veranda. Mrs. Ranger
started up, listened, sat again. "Oh," she said, in the strangest tone,
and with a hysterical little laugh, "I thought it was your father coming
home to dinner!" Then from her throat issued a stifled cry like nothing
but a cry borne up to the surface from a deep torture-chamber. And she
was talking on again--with Adelaide sobbing and Arthur fighting back the
tears. Hargrave went to the door and admitted the old lawyer.

He had a little speech which he always made on such occasions; but
to-day, with the knowledge of the astounding contents of that will on his
mind, his lips refused to utter it. He simply bowed, seated himself, and
opened the document. The old-fashioned legal phrases soon were steadying
him as the harness steadies an uneasy horse; and he