Her husband was pleased that she should remain so long before them.  And for a while, as she stood lost in contemplation, he did not speak.  Once she glanced at him, and then back at the stern face of the General, —­stern, yet kindly.  The eyes, deep-set under bushy brows, like Hugh’s, were full of fire; and yet the artist had made them human, too.  A dark, reddish brown, close-trimmed mustache and beard hid the mouth and chin.  Hugh had inherited the nose, but the father’s forehead was wider and fuller.  Hugh was at once a newer type, and an older.  The face and figure of the General were characteristic of the mid-century American of the northern states, a mixture of boldness and caution and Puritanism, who had won his battles in war and commerce by a certain native quality of mind.

“I never appreciated him,” said Hugh at length, “until after he died —­long after.  Until now, in fact.  At times we were good friends, and then something he would say or do would infuriate me, and I would purposely make him angry.  He had a time and a rule for everything, and I could not bear rules.  Breakfast was on the minute, an hour in his study to attend to affairs about the place, so many hours in his office at the mills, in the president’s room at the bank, vestry and charity meetings at regular intervals.  No movement in all this country round about was ever set on foot without him.  He was one to be finally reckoned with.  And since his death, many proofs have come to me of the things he did for people of which the world was ignorant.  I have found out at last that his way of life was, in the main, the right way.  But I know now, Honora,” he added soberly, slipping his hand within her arm, “I know now that without you I never could do all I intend to do.”

“Oh, don’t say that!” she cried.  “Don’t say that!”

“Why not?” he asked, smiling at her vehemence.  “It is not a confession of weakness.  I had the determination, it is true.  I could—­I should have done something, but my deeds would have lacked the one thing needful to lift them above the commonplace—­at least for me.  You are the inspiration.  With you here beside me, I feel that I can take up this work with joy.  Do you understand?”

She pressed his hand with her arm.

“Hugh,” she said slowly, “I hope that I shall be a help, and not—­not a hindrance.”

“A hindrance!” he exclaimed.  “You don’t know, you can’t realize, what you are to me.”

She was silent, and when she lifted her eyes it was to rest them on the portrait of his mother.  And she seemed to read in the sweet, sad eyes a question—­a question not to be put into words.  Chiltern, following her gaze, did not speak:  for a space they looked at the portrait together, and in silence . . . .

From one end of the house to the other they went, Hugh reviving at the sight of familiar objects a hundred memories of his childhood; and she trying to imagine that childhood, so different from her own, passed in this wonderful place.  In the glass cases of the gun room, among the shining, blue barrels which he had used in all parts of the world, was the little shotgun his father had had made for him when he was twelve years old.  Hugh locked the door after them when they came out, and smiled as he put the key in his pocket.