Mrs. Heeny drew a long breath, folded the paper and took off her spectacles.  “There,” she said, with a benignant smile and a tap on Paul’s cheek, “now you see how it all happened....”

Paul was not sure he did; but he made no answer.  His mind was too full of troubled thoughts.  In the dazzling description of his mother’s latest nuptials one fact alone stood out for him—­that she had said things that weren’t true of his French father.  Something he had half-guessed in her, and averted his frightened thoughts from, took his little heart in an iron grasp.  She said things that weren’t true....  That was what he had always feared to find out....  She had got up and said before a lot of people things that were awfully false about his dear French father....

The sound of a motor turning in at the gates made Mrs. Heeny exclaim “Here they are!” and a moment later Paul heard his mother calling to him.  He got up reluctantly, and stood wavering till he felt Mrs. Heeny’s astonished eye upon him.  Then he heard Mr. Moffatt’s jovial shout of “Paul Marvell, ahoy there!” and roused himself to run downstairs.

As he reached the landing he saw that the ballroom doors were open and all the lustres lit.  His mother and Mr. Moffatt stood in the middle of the shining floor, looking up at the walls; and Paul’s heart gave a wondering bound, for there, set in great gilt panels, were the tapestries that had always hung in the gallery at Saint Desert.

“Well, Senator, it feels good to shake your fist again!” his step-father said, taking him in a friendly grasp; and his mother, who looked handsomer and taller and more splendidly dressed than ever, exclaimed:  “Mercy! how they’ve cut his hair!” before she bent to kiss him.

“Oh, mother, mother!” he burst out, feeling, between his mother’s face and the others, hardly less familiar, on the walls, that he was really at home again, and not in a strange house.

“Gracious, how you squeeze!” she protested, loosening his arms.  “But you look splendidly—­and how you’ve grown!” She turned away from him and began to inspect the tapestries critically.  “Somehow they look smaller here,” she said with a tinge of disappointment.

Mr. Moffatt gave a slight laugh and walked slowly down the room, as if to study its effect.  As he turned back his wife said:  “I didn’t think you’d ever get them.”  He laughed again, more complacently.  “Well, I don’t know as I ever should have, if General Arlington hadn’t happened to bust up.”

They both smiled, and Paul, seeing his mother’s softened face, stole his hand in hers and began:  “Mother, I took a prize in composition—­”

“Did you?  You must tell me about it to-morrow.  No, I really must rush off now and dress—­I haven’t even placed the dinner-cards.”  She freed her hand, and as she turned to go Paul heard Mr. Moffatt say:  “Can’t you ever give him a minute’s time, Undine?”

She made no answer, but sailed through the door with her head high, as she did when anything annoyed her; and Paul and his step-father stood alone in the illuminated ball-room.