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 wind-
