“Call him father.  I think he will like it,” Eloise said to her mother, while Howard looked up quickly, and to Peter, who was present, it seemed as if a frown settled on his face as a smile flickered around the Colonel’s mouth at the sound of the name Amy had not given him since she came from California.

All the afternoon and evening they watched him, as his breathing grew shorter and the heavy lids fell over the eyes, which, until they closed, rested upon Amy, who held his hand and spoke to him occasionally, calling him father, and asking if he knew her.  To the very last he responded to the question with a quivering of the lids when he could no longer lift them, and when the clock on the stairs struck twelve, the physician who was present said to Eloise, “Take your mother away; he is dead.”

CHAPTER V

LOOKING FOR A WILL

For three days the Colonel lay in the great drawing-room of the Crompton House, the blinds of which were closed, while knots of crape streamed from every door, and the servants talked together in low tones, sometimes of the dead man and sometimes of the future, wondering who would be master now of Crompton Place.  Speculation on this point was rife everywhere, and on no one had it a stronger hold than on Howard himself.  He would not like to have had it known that within twenty-four hours after his uncle’s death he had gone through every pigeon-hole and nook in the Colonel’s safe and private drawers, and turned over every paper searching for a will, and when he found none, had congratulated himself that in all human probability he was the sole heir.  He was very properly sad, with an unmistakable air of ownership as he went about the place, giving orders to the servants.  To Amy he paid great deference, telling the undertaker to ask what she liked and abide by her decisions.  And here he was perfectly safe.  With the shock of the Colonel’s death Amy had relapsed into a dazed, silent mood, saying always, “I don’t know; ask Eloise,” and when Eloise was asked, she replied, “I have been here too short a time to give any orders.  Mr. Howard will tell you.”

Thus everything was left to him, as he meant it should be, stipulating that Eloise meet the people who came, some to offer their sympathy, and more from a morbid curiosity to see whatever there was to be seen.  This Eloise did with a dignity which surprised herself, and if Howard were the master, she was the mistress, and apparently as much at home as if she had lived there all her life.  Ruby was the first to call.  She had not seen Eloise since the astounding news that she was Amy’s daughter.

“I am so glad for you,” she said, and the first tears Eloise had shed sprang to her eyes as she laid her head on Ruby’s arm, just as she had done in the days of her trouble and pain.

Mrs. Biggs came, too,—­very loud in her protestations of delight and assertions that she had always known Eloise was above the common.