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 man who peered at them all like a spiteful mouse through his dim spectacles.

As for Hattie, her eyes asked only one thing, "Was he—this man—good enough for Ellen?" His foreign blood showed itself more plainly than she had expected. It troubled her that her daughter should be marrying a man of foreign blood; for, vaguely, all foreigners were associated in her mind with those dark, sullen, violent men who worked in the black Mills surrounding Shane's Castle.

There flashed between the two—Callendar and Hattie—no spark either of understanding or enmity. Rather it seemed that the opinions of both were colored by surprise and a touch of suspicion. In Hattie's eyes there was a fire of pride and possession, the look of one who would fight for her children, passionately; and in the gray eyes of Callendar there was only the opaque, inscrutable expression which only Ellen, of them all, had ever seen dissolve or change.

But they were grave, all of them, in a fashion that presently entered Hattie's spirit and made her feel that their welcome was lacking in enthusiasm. Perhaps (she thought) it was the war; they were so close to it and Ellen, like herself, must be thinking always of Fergus. Perhaps they did not really want her there. . . any of them. Yet they had written her with so much eagerness. It was a doubt that filled her with a sharp terror of growing old and useless and dependent.

Lily (whom she had not seen in years, Lily who was now Madame de Cyon) seemed scarcely changed at all. She could not be (Hattie, watching her, hastily calculated the years) she could not be a day less than forty-five; yet there she was, a woman who had sinned, looking young, almost fresh, scarcely a day older than Ellen who was twelve years younger. . . more plump than Ellen and, strangely enough, more soft. Still, Hattie reflected, with a grim satisfaction, she had painted her face, and her hair, it was certain, had been "touched up."

Perhaps in Paris all life was different; perhaps such a life