The Colonel strode on, looking neither to right nor left, saying never a word.  They reached their home grounds, passed up the path in silence and entered the house.  The Colonel went straight to the stairs and cried in a loud voice: 

“Beatrice!”

The tone thrilled Mary Louise with a premonition of evil.  A door was hastily opened and her mother appeared at the head of the stairs, looking down on them with the customary anxiety on her worn features doubly accentuated.

“Again, father?” she asked in a voice that slightly trembled.

“Yes.  Come with me to the library, Beatrice.”

CHAPTER IV

SHIFTING SANDS

Mary Louise hid herself in the drawing-room, where she could watch the closed door of the library opposite.  At times she trembled with an unknown dread; again, she told herself that no harm could possibly befall her dear, good Gran’pa Jim or her faithful, loving mother.  Yet why were they closeted in the library so long, and how could the meeting with that insolent stranger affect Colonel Weatherby so strongly?

After a long time her mother came out, looking more pallid and harassed than ever but strangely composed.  She kissed Mary Louise, who came to meet her, and said: 

“Get ready for dinner, dear.  We are late.”

The girl went to her room, dazed and uneasy.  At dinner her mother appeared at the table, eating little or nothing, but Gran’pa Jim was not present.  Afterward she learned that he had gone over to Miss Stearne’s School for Girls, where he completed important arrangements concerning his granddaughter.

When dinner was over Mary Louise went into the library and, drawing a chair to where the light of the student lamp flooded her book, tried to read.  But the words were blurred and her mind was in a sort of chaos.  Mamma Bee had summoned Aunt Polly and Uncle Eben to her room, where she was now holding a conference with the faithful colored servants.  A strange and subtle atmosphere of unrest pervaded the house; Mary Louise scented radical changes in their heretofore pleasant home life, but what these changes were to be or what necessitated them she could not imagine.

After a while she heard Gran’pa Jim enter the hall and hang up his hat and coat and place his cane in the rack.  Then he came to the door of the library and stood a moment looking hard at Mary Louise.  Her own eyes regarded her grandfather earnestly, questioning him as positively as if she had spoken.

He drew a chair before her and leaning over took both her hands in his and held them fast.