Everything had gone well with her, and scarcely a sorrow had touched her, for though poor, stupid Jack had slept for five years in the Tracy lot with only the woman of the Tramp House for company, he was so near an imbecile when he died that his death was a blessing rather than otherwise.

Tom, with his fine figure, his fastidious tastes, and aristocratic notions, was the apple of her eye, and _tout a fait au fait_, she said, when her French fever was at its height and she wished to impress her hearers with her knowledge of the language; while, except for her ill-health, and the bad taste she manifested in her liking for Harold's society, Maude was _tout a fait au fait_, too.

She had no dread of Gretchen, now; even Arthur had ceased to talk of her, and was as a rule very quiet and contented.
Only her husband troubled her, for with the passing years his silence and abstraction had increased, until now it was nothing remarkable for him to go days without speaking to any one unless he were first spoken to.

His hair was white as snow, and made him look years older than he really was; while the habit he had of always walking with his head down, and a stoop in his shoulders, added to his apparent years.
During the time Maude was in Europe he grew old very fast, for Maude was all that made life endurable.

To see her in her young beauty, flitting about the house and grounds like a bright bird, whose nest is high up in some sheltered spot where the storms never come, was some compensation for what he had done; but when she was gone there came over him such a sense of loneliness and desolation that at times he feared lest he should become crazier than his brother, who really appeared to be improving, although the strange forgetfulness of past events still clung to and increased upon him.