CHAPTER X.
"THROUGH LOVE FOR MY CHILDREN" On the day after the funeral, Mrs.Ranger and the two children and young Hargrave were in the back parlor, waiting for Judge Torrey to come and read the will.

The well-meant intrusions, the services, the burial--all those barbarous customs that stretch on the rack those who really love the dead whom society compels them publicly to mourn--had left cruel marks on Adelaide and on Arthur; but their mother seemed unchanged.

She was talking incessantly now, addressing herself to Dory, since he alone was able to heed her.

Her talk was an almost incoherent stream, as if she neither knew nor cared what she was saying so long as she could keep that stream going--the stream whose sound at least made the voice in her heart, the voice of desolation, less clear and terrible, though not less insistent.
There was the beat of a man's footsteps on the side veranda.

Mrs.Ranger started up, listened, sat again.