ything had been heard since last
night of Mr. Corvet. She was quite sure, if her father had had word,
he would have awakened her; and there was no news. But Uncle Benny's
son, she remembered, was coming to breakfast.

Uncle Benny's son! That suggested to Constance's mother only something
unpleasant, something to be avoided and considered as little as
possible. But Alan--Uncle Benny's son--was not unpleasant at all; he
was, in fact, quite the reverse. Constance had liked him from the
moment that, confused a little by Benjamin Corvet's absence and
Simons's manner in greeting him, he had turned to her for explanation;
she had liked the way he had openly studied her and approved her, as
she was approving him; she had liked the way he had told her of
himself, and the fact that he knew nothing of the man who proved to be
his father; she had liked very much the complete absence of impulse to
force or to pretend feeling when she had brought him the picture of his
father--when he, amazed at himself for not feeling, had looked at her;
and she had liked most of all his refusal, for himself and for his
father, to accept positive stigma until it should be proved.

She had not designated any hour for breakfast, and she supposed that,
coming from the country, he would believe breakfast to be early. But
when she got downstairs, though it was nearly nine o'clock, he had not
come; she went to the front window to watch for him, and after a few
minutes she saw him approaching, looking often to the lake as though
amazed by the change in it.

She went to the door and herself let him in.

"Father has gone down-town," she told him, as he took off his things.
"Mr. Spearman returns from Duluth this morning, and father wished to
tell him about you as soon as possible. I told father you had come to
see him last night; and he said to bring you down to the office."

"I overslept, I'm afraid," Alan said.

"You slept well, then?"

"Very well--after a while."

"I'll take you down-town myself after breakfast."

She said no more but led him into the breakfast room. It was a
delightful, cozy little room, Dutch furnished, with a single wide
window to the east, an enormous hooded fireplace taking up half the
north wall, and blue Delft tiles set above it and paneled in the walls
all about the room. There were the quaint blue windmills, the fishing
boats, the baggy-breeked, wooden-shod folk, the canals and barges, the
dikes and their guard