“How do you like the face?” he returned.

The dark eyes and sweet mouth looked back at her.  She frowned slightly.  She did not like the situation in which she had found the photograph.  It was far too intimate for a stranger, and made her a little nervous.

“If he is going to marry again, then good-by indeed!” she thought.

“I think it is rather sentimental,” she returned, with an air of engaging candor, “don’t you?  Just my first impression, you know; but it’s a face I shouldn’t trust.  Who is it?”

“It is Jewel’s mother,” returned the broker quietly, “my daughter Julia.  Jewel brought it down last night, also a lot of little letters her mother had put in the pockets of the child’s dresses when she packed them.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mrs. Evringham triumphantly.  “Didn’t I say she was sentimental?  About that sort of thing my perceptions are always so keen.”

“H’m.  I read the letters, and I judged from them that one can trust her.  Will you be seated?” He placed a chair.  “I should like to ask your plans for the summer.”

Mrs. Evringham looked up quickly, startled.  “Oh, I haven’t any.  Have you?”

“Yes.  I always seek some cool spot.  You have an invitation to View Point, I understand.  You could scarcely do better.”

“I have reasons, father,” impressively, “reasons for declining that.”

“Then where are you going?”

“I would just as lief stay here and take care of your house as not,” declared the lady magnanimously.

“Ha!  Without any servants?”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“They are going away for a vacation.  I am intending to have the house wired, and Mrs. Forbes and Zeke will hold sway in the barn.  She doesn’t wish to leave him.”

Mrs. Evringham was silenced and dismayed.  She felt herself being firmly and inexorably pushed out of this well-lined nest.

Her eyes fell before the impenetrable ones regarding her.

“How did Jewel ever win him?” she thought.  The picturesque pony, with his arched neck and expensive trappings, had outraged her feelings for days.

“About the View Point plan,” continued Mr. Evringham deliberately.  “I think there are influences waiting for you there that will be of benefit.  There is a new philosophy percolating in these days through our worldly rubbish which you and I would be the better for grasping.  Your chances are better than mine, for you are young still.  Your daughter is expanding like a flower already, in the first rays of her understanding of it.  This young man whom you fancy you can avoid is a help to her.  Mr. Reeves was talking to me about him last night.  He says that so far as his business is concerned, young Bonnell is proving the square peg in the square hole.  I don’t know what Eloise’s sentiments are toward him, but I do know that she shall be independent of any one’s financial help but mine.”