His mother, her white face a shade whiter, said: "I expect you'd better sit--there." She neither pointed nor looked, but they understood that she meant Hiram's place.

It was her formal announcement of her forgiveness and of her recognition of the new head of the family.

With that in his face that gave Adelaide a sense of the ending of a tension within her, he seated himself where his father had always sat.
It was a silent supper, each one absorbed in thoughts which could not have been uttered, no one able to find any subject that would not make overwhelming the awful sense of the one that was not there and never again would be.

Mrs.Ranger spoke once.

"How did you find Janet ?" she said to Arthur.
His face grew red, with gray underneath.