Finally the furnishing was complete; the windows were polished, the steps were furbished, and nothing seemed to wait but the arrival of the family for which the dwelling had been prepared.

One late afternoon, before the lamps were lighted in the streets, he could see that the house was illuminated; and just as the darkness came on, a carriage drove up and a family alighted.  The doors were thrown open, the beautiful woman stood upon the threshold, and all ran up to enter.  She kissed the lady of the house, kissed the children, shook hands cordially with the gentleman of the party, and then the doors were swung to, and they were shut from the sight of the street; but just as the man entered, the light from the hall and the light from the street revealed the flushed face and portly figure of Robert Belcher.

Harry knew him, and ran down stairs to Mrs. Balfour, pale and agitated as if he had seen a ghost.  “It is Mr. Belcher,” he said, “and I must go back.  I know he’ll find me; I must go back to-morrow.”

It was a long time before the family could pacify him and assure him of their power to protect him; but they did it at last, though they left him haunted with the thought that he might be exposed at any moment to the new companions of his life as a pauper and the son of a pauper.  The great humiliation had been burned into his soul.  The petty tyrannies of Tom Buffum had cowed him, so that it would be difficult for him ever to emerge from their influence into a perfectly free boyhood and manhood.  Had they been continued long enough, they would have ruined him.  Once he had been entirely in the power of adverse circumstances and a brutal will, and he was almost incurably wounded.

The opposite side of the street presented very different scenes.  Mrs. Belcher found, through the neighborly services of Mrs. Dillingham, that her home was all prepared for her, even to the selection and engagement of her domestic service.  A splendid dinner was ready to be served, for which Mr. Belcher, who had been in constant communication with his convenient and most officious friend, had brought the silver; and the first business was to dispose of it.  Mrs. Dillingham led the mistress of the house to her seat, distributed the children, and amused them all by the accounts she gave them of her efforts to make their entrance and welcome satisfactory.  Mrs. Belcher observed her quietly, acknowledged to herself the woman’s personal charms—­her beauty, her wit, her humor, her sprightliness, and her more than neighborly service; but her quick, womanly instincts detected something which she did not like.  She saw that Mr. Belcher was fascinated by her, and that he felt that she had rendered him and the family a service for which great gratitude was due; but she saw that the object of his admiration was selfish—­that she loved power, delighted in having things her own way, and, more than all, was determined to place the mistress of the house under obligations to her.  It would have been far more agreeable to Mrs. Belcher to find everything in confusion, than to have her house brought into habitable order by a stranger in whom she had no trust, and upon whom she had no claim.  Mr. Belcher had bought the house without her knowledge; Mrs. Dillingham had arranged it without her supervision.  She seemed to herself to be simply a child, over whose life others had assumed the offices of administration.