uch anxiety in days gone by.

"Usen't he to be so?" asked Kitty, a little viciously. "He is so very
exact now," she added. "He expected to be back home before this"--how
she loved to use that word home--"and so we thought he would be here
when you arrived. But he has been detained at Aspen Vale. He had a big
business deal on--"

"A big business deal? Is he--is he in a large way of business?" Mona
asked almost incredulously. Shiel Crozier in a large way of business,
in a big business deal? It did not seem possible. His had ever been the
game of chance. Business--business?

"He doesn't talk himself, of course; that wouldn't be like him,"--Kitty
had joy in giving this wife the character of her husband, "but they say
that if he succeeds in what he's trying to do now he will make a great
deal of money."

"Then he has not made it yet?" asked Mrs. Crozier.

"He has always been able to pay his board regularly, with enough left
for a pew in church," answered Kitty with dry malice; for she mistook
the light in the other's eyes, and thought it was avarice; and the love
of money had no place in Kitty's make-up. She herself would never have
been influenced by money where a man was concerned.

"Here's the house," she quickly added; "our home, where Mr. Crozier
lives. He has the best room, so yours won't be quite so good. It's
mother's--she's giving it up to you. With your trunks and things, you'll
want a room to yourself," Kitty added, not at all unconscious that she
was putting a phase of the problem of Crozier and his wife in a very
commonplace way; but she did not look into Mrs. Crozier's face as she
said it.

Mrs. Crozier, however, was fully conscious of the poignancy of the
remark, and once again her face flushed slightly, though she kept
outward composure.

"Mother, mother, are you there?" Kitty called, as she escorted the wife
up the garden walk.

An instant later Mrs. Tynan cheerfully welcomed the disturber of the
peace of the home where Shiel Crozier had been the central figure for so
long.

CHAPTER XII. AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM

"What are you laughing at, Kitty? You cackle like a young hen with her
first egg." So spoke Mrs. Tynan to her daughter, who alternately swung
backwards and forwards in a big rocking-chair, silently gazing into the
distant sky, or sat still and "cackled" as her mother had said.

A person of real observation and astuteness, however, would have
noticed that Kitty's laughter told a