nly the father had seen at times, since the homeward
voyage, a certain hesitancy on part of the son, and within the past few
days, for the first time in Jimmy's life, Dwight had noted symptoms of
something like avoidance, concealment, embarrassment, _some_thing that
told his jealous, over-anxious heart the boy no longer utterly confided
in the man. It was late the previous evening when the little fellow had
returned with his stanch friend, Sergeant French, and a fine string of
trout, happy, radiant, proud of his success, but so tired he could
hardly keep his eyes open long enough to undress and get to bed. Dwight
had met him at the door, cautioning silence on mamma's account, and the
young face that beamed up at his, all delight and eagerness at first,
clouded almost instantly at the word. Jimmy did not even care for the
tempting supper set aside for him--he had had such a big lunch, he said,
in smothered tone, as he prattled eagerly to his father and showed his
finny prizes, and sipped at his glass of milk. But Dwight had been
brooding over little things that had come to him since Foster's assisted
emigration. He had returned straight from his conference with Stone and
the surgeon to find Inez reduced to the sofa and smelling salts--to tell
her at once that their guest was gone, not because of a fracas with Ray,
as Foster had furiously declared, but because of telegraphic orders from
Washington that had come, possibly, as the result of Foster's own
telegraphic inquiries of Saturday and Sunday. Not for a star would
Dwight let his wife suppose that Foster's protracted visit had given him
the least uneasiness! But the maid, that pert and flippant young person
so much in evidence about the house, so indispensable to Inez, so
intangibly a nuisance to him, kept flitting in and out, with her
persistent, "Madame should compose herself"; "Madame should not try to
talk."

The "young person's" nationality, Dwight believed, was Swiss-Italian,
rather than French. They had picked her up in Milan, but her
professional interests, it seems, were advanced by the adoption of
French methods and mannerisms. She had early striven to establish
herself as companion rather than maid, to be called Mademoiselle rather
than Felicie, but the dragoon had sharply drawn the line, and in the
beginning, at least, the man was master. As ills accumulated, however,
and masculine strength deferred to feminine weakness, he succumbed to
their wishes, with th