The name of Mrs. Quiggins, whose portrait had still a conspicuous niche among the lares of the household,—­a little thin silvery old widow-lady, suggesting great sadness, much gentleness, and a little severity,—­had thus become for the family of James Mesurier a symbol of sanctity, with which a properly accredited saint of the calendar could certainly not, in that Protestant home, have competed.  It was she who had given him that little well-worn Bible which lay on the table with his letters and papers, as he wrote under the lamplight, and than which a world full of sacred relics contains none more sacred.  A business-like elastic band encircled its covers, as a precaution against pages becoming loose with much turning; and inside you would have found scarcely a chapter unpencilled,—­texts underlined, and sermons of special helpfulness noted by date and preacher on the margin,—­the itinerary of a devout human soul on its way through this world to the next.

The Bible and the sermons of a certain famous Nonconformist Divine of the day were James Mesurier’s favourite and practically his only reading, at this time; though as a young man he had picked up a fair education for himself, and had taken a certain interest in modern history.  For novels he had not merely disapproval, but absolutely no taste.  Once in a specially genial mood he had undertaken to try “Ivanhoe,” to please his favourite daughter,—­this night in revolt against him,—­and in half-an-hour he had been surprised with laughter, sound asleep.  The sermon that would send him to sleep had never been written, at all events by his favourite theologian, whose sermons he read every Sunday afternoon, and annotated with that same loving appreciation and careful pencil with which a scholar annotates some classic; so true is it that it is we who dignify our occupations, not they us.

Similarly, James Mesurier presided over the destinies of a large commercial undertaking, with the air of one who had been called rather to direct an empire than a business.  You would say as he went by, “There goes one accustomed to rule, accustomed to be regarded with great respect;” but that air had been his long before the authority that once more inadequately accounted for it.

Thus this night, as he sat writing, his handsome, rather small, iron-grey head bent over his papers, his face somewhat French in character, his short beard slightly pointed; distinguished, refined, severe; he had the look of a marshal of France engrossed with documents of state.

The mother, who sat in an armchair by the fire, reading, was a woman of about forty-five, with a fine blonde, aquiline face, distinctively English, and radiating intelligence from its large sympathetic lines.  She was in some respects so different from her husband as at times to make children precociously wise—­but nevertheless, far from knowing everything—­wonder why she had ever married their father, for whom, at