And Mary Caroline Darrah’s girl had come home—­home to her own, he mused.  There was mystery in it, the mystery that sometimes brands the unborn.  Brown had never let Mary Caroline come back and the few letters she had written had told them little of the life she led.  The constraint had wrung his wife’s yearning heart.  Only a letter had come when somehow the news had reached her of the death of Matilda’s boy, and it had been wild and sweet and athrob with her love of them.  And in its pages her own hopes for the spring were confessed in a passion of desire to give and claim sympathy.  Her baby had been born and she was dead and buried before they had heard of it; twenty-three years ago!  And Matilda’s grief for her own child had been always mingled with love and longing for the motherless, unattainable young thing across the distance.  Brown had kept the girl to himself and had never brought her back—­because he dared not.

The major’s powerful old hands writhed around the arms of his chair and his eyes glowed into the embers like live sparks.  It was years, nearly thirty years ago—­but, God, how the tragedy of it came back!  The hot blood beat into his veins and he could feel it and see it all.  Would the picture always burn in his brain?  Nearly thirty years ago—­

The logs crashed apart in the hearth and with a start the major rose to his feet, a tear dashed aside under his shaggy old eyebrows.  He would go back to his Immortals—­and forget.  Perhaps Phoebe would come in for lunch.  That would make forgetting easier.

Where had the girl been for the last few days?  He smiled as he found himself in something of David’s dismay at not having seen the busy young woman for quite a time.

And it was perhaps an hour later that, as he sat in the breakfast room partaking of his lunch in solitary comfort, lost to the world, his wish for her brought its materialization.  He had the morning’s paper propped up before him and an outspread book rested by his plate, while he held a large volume balanced on his knee, which he paused occasionally to consult.

Mrs. Buchanan had telephoned that she would be home with her guest at five o’clock and his mind was filled with pleasant anticipation.  But there was never a time with the major, no matter how filled the life was around him with the excitement of events, with the echo of joy or woe, the clash of social strife or the turmoil of vaster interests, when he failed to be able to plunge into his books and lose himself completely.

He was in the act of consuming a remnant of a corn muffin and a draft from his paper at the same time, when he heard a merry voice in laughing greeting to Jeff, and the rose damask curtains that hung between the breakfast room and the hall parted, and Phoebe stood framed against their heavy folds.  She was the freshest, most radiant, tailor-made vision imaginable and the major smiled a large joyful smile at the sight of her.