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She shook hands with Stacey, a little shyly and formally, almost like her son.

“Let’s go into the sitting-room,” she said, in the abrupt way she had of speaking. “There’s a pleasant fire in there.”

But when they had sat down in front of it they all became silent—all, that is, save Jack, who, on the floor with his toys, babbled to himself ceaselessly of a thousand important things. Even Carter was silent. He sat on a foot-stool and gazed at Stacey from a little distance with patient expectancy.

Stacey, however, had forgotten him. A dozen thoughts were moving through the young man’s mind, yet not turbulently, but smoothly, without interference, like ships on a wide river. Perhaps this was because he was not thinking of himself at all, but of Phil and Catherine. He looked at Catherine, sitting there across the hearth, she, too, apparently far away in thought, and tried to study her objectively. She was tall and dark and handsome, with high cheek-bones, a high forehead, and black eyes set deep beneath long sweeping lashes. She had a magnificent figure, lithe, supple and without opulence—slender, even,—but making evident the large bony structure. So, too, with her head. It was like a firm Mantegna drawing, revealing clearly what lay beneath the smooth close-textured skin. Therefore in repose her face appeared even stern. There was something sculpturesque about Catherine.