ple had an influence and authority in Mona Crozier's life
which now outweighed the advantage wealth gave her. Her wealth had not
kept her husband beside her when delicate and perfumed tyranny began
to flutter its banners of control over him. Her fortune had driven him
forth when her beauty and her love ought to have kept him close to her,
whatever fate might bring to their door, or whatever his misfortune or
the catastrophe falling on him. It was all deeply humiliating, and the
inward dejection made her now feel that her body was the last effort of
a failing creative power. So she sat down instead of standing up in a
vain effort at retrieval.

The Young Doctor sat down also, but Kitty did not, and in her buoyant
youth and command of the situation she seemed Amazonian to Mona's eyes.
It must be said for Kitty that she remained standing only because a
restlessness had seized her which was not present when she was with Mona
in Crozier's room. It was now as though something was going to happen
which she must face standing; as though something was coming out of
the unknown and forbidding future and was making itself felt before its
time. Her eyes were almost painfully bright as she moved about the room
doing little things. Presently she began to lay a cloth and place
dishes silently on the table--long before the proper time, as her mother
reminded her when she entered for a moment and then quickly passed on
into the kitchen, at a warning glance from Kitty, which said that the
Young Doctor and Mona were not to be disturbed.

"Well, Askatoon is a place where one feels at home quickly," added
the Young Doctor, as Mona did not at once respond to his first remark.
"Every one who comes here always feels as though he--or she--owns the
place. It's the way the place is made. The trouble with most of us is
that we want to put the feeling into practice and take possession of
'all and sundry.' Isn't that true, Miss Tynan?"

"As true as most things you say," retorted Kitty, as she flicked the
white tablecloth. "If mother and I hadn't such wonderful good health I
suppose you'd come often enough here to give you real possession. Do you
know, Mrs. Crozier," she added, with her wistful eyes vainly trying to
be merely mischievous, "he once charged me five dollars for torturing
me like a Red Indian. I had put my elbow out of joint, and he put it
in again with his knee and both hands, as though it was the wheel of a
wagon and he was trying to