and that Dwight had rather counted on.

Still, Dwight's health was mending every week. Inez had seen so much of
foreign life in her younger days she could not be expected to care to go
poking about, as he did with Jimmy, into all manner of odd nooks and
corners. Father and son once more were hand in hand--hand in glove--for
hours each day, and but for a shyness Jim would surely soon get over--a
queer, silent shrinking from his beautiful young mother--but for this
and one or two little worries due to the non-appearance of letters that
ought to have come and doubtless would come, Dwight strove to persuade
himself that he was again a happy and an enviable man.

Then came a day that left its impress on them all. There had been
something very like demur on part of the Welland family when Dwight
first announced his intention of taking Jimmy with them to see the Old
World. What would Inez--they spoke her name with effort--think of such a
plan? Was not a young bride justified in expecting the undivided
attention of her husband? Would not any girl, placed as she was, prefer
a honeymoon unclouded by the presence of the children of her
predecessor? Inez had not warmed to her other kindred by marriage; could
she be expected to welcome and, all at once, to warm to little Jim?
Conscientiously and consistently they had tried to like Inez, and could
not. She was beautiful; she was appealing; she was apparently all desire
to please, but she was not convincing. The more they saw of her the less
they liked, but Dwight's infatuation was complete. And still he would
have his boy, and they spoke at last. He had answered by summoning her
to the room--a strange proceeding--and bidding her speak for him, and
she did. She said her heart had yearned for little Jim ever since the
captain first began to tell of him, and when she realized later how
utterly the father's heart was bound up in his boy, she had prayed for
guidance that she might prove a second mother to the little fellow, and
it was her earnest desire that the lad might come with them. How else
was she to hope to win his trust, his affection? There was nothing left
for them to say; but the dread and desolation that fell upon the
household when, for the second time, they were compelled to part with
Margaret's boy, no one but the Wellands was permitted to know.

Inez, who had been a model sailor on the Pacific, kept much to her
stateroom on the gray Atlantic, though the voyage was unusua