of things. You will order him to take the position
offered.«
    »Mother, I can do nothing of the kind. If necessary, I'll go for a governess
as well.«
    Thereupon Zillah wept, protesting that such desecration was impossible. The
scene prolonged itself to midnight. On the morrow, with the exception of Mrs.
Denyer's resolve to subdue Marsh, all was forgotten, and the Denyer family
pursued their old course, putting off decided action until there should come
another cry of Wolf!
 

                                   Chapter IV

                                Miriam's Brother

But for the aid of his wife's more sympathetic insight, Edward Spence would have
continued to interpret Miriam's cheerless frame of mind as a mere result of
impatience at being removed from the familiar scenes of her religious activity,
and of disquietude amid uncongenial surroundings. »A Puritan at Naples« - that
was the phrase which represented her to his imagination; his liking for the
picturesque and suggestive led him to regard her solely in that light. No strain
of modern humanitarianism complicated Miriam's character. One had not to take
into account a possible melancholy produced by the contrast between her life of
ease in the South, and the squalor of laborious multitudes under a sky of
mill-smoke and English fog. Of the new philanthropy she spoke, if at all, with
angry scorn, holding it to be based on rationalism, radicalism, positivism, or
whatsoever name embodied the conflict between the children of this world and the
children of light. Far from Miriam any desire to abolish the misery which was
among the divinely-appointed conditions of this preliminary existence. No; she
was uncomfortable, and content that others should be so, for discomfort's sake.
It fretted her that the Sunday in Naples could not be as universally dolorous as
it was at Bartles. It revolted her to hear happy voices in a country abandoned
to heathendom.
    »Whenever I see her looking at old Vesuvius,« said Spence to Eleanor, his
eye twinkling, »I feel sure that she muses on the possibility of another
tremendous outbreak. She regards him in a friendly way; he is the minister of
vengeance.«
    Eleanor's discernment was not long in bringing her to a modification of this
estimate.
    »I am convinced, Ned, that her thoughts are not so constantly at Bartles as
we imagine. In any case, I begin to understand what she suffers from most. It is
want of occupation for her mind. She is crushed with ennui.«
    »This is irreverence. As well attribute ennui to the Prophet Jeremiah
meditating woes to