When the temptation grew too overpowering he left his office and went down into the country.  It always did him good to go there.  To be there was like a plunge in a cool, limpid pool.  He had been so long in the turmoil and strife of the struggle for success—­for wealth; had been so wholly surrounded by those who strove as he strove, tearing and trampling and rending those who were in their way, that he had almost lost sight of the life that lay outside of the dust and din of that arena.  He had almost forgotten that life held other rewards than riches.  He had forgotten the calm and tranquil region that stretched beyond the moil and anguish of the strife for gain.

Here his father walked with him again, calm, serene, and elevated, his thoughts high above all commercial matters, ranging the fields of lofty speculation with statesmen, philosophers, and poets, holding up to his gaze again lofty ideals; practising, without a thought of reward, the very gospel of universal gentleness and kindness.

There his mother, too, moved in spirit once more beside him with her angelic smile, breathing the purity of heaven.  How far away it seemed from that world in which he had been living!—­as far as they were from the worldlings who made it.

Curiously, when he was in New York he found himself under the allurement of Alice Lancaster.  When he was in the country he found that he was in love with Lois Huntington.

It was this that mystified him and worried him.  He believed—­that is, he almost believed—­that Alice Lancaster would marry him.  His friends thought that she would.  Several of them had told him so.  Many of them acted on this belief.  And this had something to do with his retirement.  As much as he liked Alice Lancaster, as clearly as he felt how but for one fact it would have suited that they should marry, one fact changed everything:  he was not in love with her.

He was in love with a young girl who had never given him a thought except as a sort of hereditary friend.  Turning from one door at which the light of happiness had shone, he had found himself caught at another from which a radiance shone that dimmed all other lights.  Yet it was fast shut.  At length he determined to cut the knot.  He would put his fate to the test.

Two days after he formed this resolve he walked into the hotel at Brookford and registered.  As he turned, he stood face to face with Mrs. Nailor.  Mrs. Nailor of late had been all cordiality to him.

“Why, you dear boy, where did you come from?” she asked him in pleased surprise.  “I thought you were stretched at Mrs. Wentworth’s feet in the—­Where has she been this summer?”

Keith’s brow clouded.  He remembered when Wickersham was her “dear boy.”

“It is a position I am not in the habit of occupying—­at least, toward ladies who have husbands to occupy it.  You are thinking of some one else,” he added coldly, wishing devoutly that Mrs. Nailor were in Halifax.