aside a moment, in the lower hall, "remember that they've all
been very kind to you, dear! It's going to be hard for them all!"

"Yes, I know!" Norma said, hastily, the admonition not to her taste.

"And what you and Wolf will do with all that money----!" her aunt mused,
shaking her head. "Well, one thing at a time! But I know," she finished,
fondly, "my girl will show them all what a generous and a lovely nature
she has, in all the changes and shifts!"

Clever Aunt Kate! Norma smiled to herself as she went upstairs. She had
hundreds of times before this guided the girl by premature confidence
and praise; she knew how Norma loved the approbation of those about her.

Not but what Norma meant to be everything that was broad and considerate
now; she had assumed that position from the beginning. Leslie's chagrin,
Aunt Annie's consternation, should be respected and humoured. They had
sometimes shown her the arrogant, the supercilious side of the Melrose
nature, in the years gone by. Now she, the truest Melrose of them all,
would show them real greatness of soul. She would talk it all over with
Wolf, of course----

She missed Wolf. It was, as always, a curiously unsatisfying atmosphere,
this of the old Melrose house. The whispers, the hushed footsteps, the
lowered voices, Aunt Annie's plaintive heroism in her superb crapes, the
almost belligerent loyalty of the intimate friends who praised and
marvelled at her, the costly flowers--thousands of dollars' worth of
them--the extra men helping Joseph to keep everything decorous and
beautiful--somehow it all sickened Norma, and she wished that Wolf
could come and take her for a walk, and talk to her about it. He would
be interested in it all, and he would laugh at her account of the
undertakers, and he would break into elementary socialism when the cost
of the whole pompous pageant was estimated.

And what would he think of her new-found wealth? Norma tried to imagine
it, but somehow she could not think of Wolf as very much affected. He
hated society, primarily, and he would never be idle, not for the
treasures of India. He would let her spend it as she pleased, and go on
working rapturously at his valves and meters and gauges, perhaps
delighted if she bought him the costliest motor-car made, or the finest
of mechanical piano-players, but quite as willing that the pearls about
his wife's throat should cost fifty dollars as fifty thousand, and quite
as anxious that the heiress