Alnwick,
where, as if he had something for which to atone, he was unusually kind
and indulgent, caressing her with unwonted tenderness, and making her
ask him once if he loved her a great deal more now than when they were
first married.

"Yes, darling, a great deal more," was Wilford's answer, as he kissed
her upturned face, and then went for the last time to Genevra's grave;
for on the morrow they were to leave the neighborhood of Alnwick for the
heather blooms of Scotland.

There was a trip to Edinburgh, a stormy passage across the Straits of
Dover, a two months' sojourn in Paris, and then they went to Rome, where
Wilford intended to pass the winter, journeying in the spring through
different parts of Europe. He was in no haste to return to America; he
would rather stay where he could have Katy all to himself, away from her
family and his own. But it was not so to be, and not very long after his
arrival at Rome there came a letter from his mother apprising him of his
father's dangerous illness, and asking him to come home at once. The
elder Cameron had not been well since Wilford left the country, and the
physician was fearful that the disease had assumed a consumptive form,
Mrs. Cameron wrote, adding that her husband's only anxiety was to see
his son again. To this there was no demur, and about the first of
December, six months from the time he had sailed, Wilford arrived in
Boston, having taken a steamer for that city. His first act was to
telegraph for news of his father, receiving a reply that he was better;
the alarming symptoms had disappeared, and there was now great hope of
his recovery.

"We might have stayed longer in Europe," Katy said, feeling a little
chill of disappointment--not that her father-in-law was better, but at
being called home for nothing, when her life abroad was so happy and
free from care.

Somehow the atmosphere of America seemed different from what it used
to be. It was colder, bluer, the little lady said, tapping her foot
uneasily and looking from her windows at the Revere out upon the snowy
streets, through which the wintry wind was blowing in heavy gales.

"Yes, it is a heap colder," she sighed, as she returned to the large
chair which Esther had drawn for her before the cheerful fire, charging
her disquiet to the weather once, never dreaming of imputing it to her
husband, who was far more its cause than was the December cold.

He, too, though glad of his father's improvement,