Free Astra by Grace Livingston Hill

evidence of curiosity concerning a strange typist brought in. Astra gathered that the feeling in the office was one of great respect and confidence in their employer, and an interest a little more than the mere business relation between employer and employee. Her brief stay with her cousins in the west had stressed the questioning of all these matters, the formal things of the world, and made her wonder if perhaps she was wise in going with a stranger to his office. She knew that would be the first question her cousin Miriam would ask if she were here.
“What do you know about this stranger? How do you know he is respectable?”
    So Astra was pleasantly relieved to find everything so altogether beyond question.
    An hour later, when Astra went to Cameron’s private office with the completed papers, she noticed a silver-framed photograph standing on Cameron’s desk—a lovely elderly woman with wavy white hair and gentle lines about her mouth that showed she had met suffering and pain and come through unbroken. It was a strong face, with beautiful triumphant eyes that reminded her of the young man. She was studying the picture while he looked over the papers she had brought. Suddenly he looked up and saw her.
    “That’s my mother,” he said gently, as if he were introducing her to royalty.
    “She is lovely,” said Astra.
    “Yes,” said Cameron. “And she was wonderful!” Then he added in a quiet voice that sounded as if it came from the tolling of a sweet bell down in his soul, “She went to heaven when I was twelve years old.”
    “Oh!” said Astra, in a tone like a cool, comforting hand on a fevered brow. The two stood for a moment more looking at the picture, as one looks down at a sweet face in a casket with a background of gentleness and self-sacrifice and love and hard work, bordered by a wealth of pleasant flowers. Wistfully, with no regrets, and only a hopeful looking forward to another life and something precious that will never fade.
    Then Cameron drew a quick deep breath and turned to her with a hover of a smile on his lips.
    “Well now, shall we go to lunch? Perhaps we had better take these papers with us and make sure they get to the lawyer at once and without intervening hands. Is that all right with you?”
    So Astra walked out with him, carrying in her mind the sweet expression of the pictured face on the son’s desk.

Chapter 6
    T he Cameron family got a place for Charles in the town bank as soon as he was out of college. He was the youngest of the flock, and their father was old, near to the end. They considered themselves somewhat responsible for him, at least responsible that he should be a credit to the family.
    They ignored their stepmother. In fact, they had always ignored her since she came among them, although she was a quiet, respectable, dignified woman with a modest fortune of her own, who did not need to be considered financially. There was nothing wrong with her, except that they resented anybody taking the place their own mother had occupied. It was a pose they encouraged in themselves.
    They considered that they had done very well for Charles in getting him this position in the bank, where there was great possibility of his rising. He might even get to be president someday. He was bright and smart, and the Camerons never did anything halfway. They gave him to understand that they were expecting great things of him.
    Charles himself had been docile enough at first. He had taken his collegiate course seriously and had scarcely come out of its atmosphere as yet to realize that it was over and a new era had begun. His immediate thoughts were for his father, who had always been a strong, steady, dependable background in his life, the one to whom he was accountable, and for whose sake he was doing his best. It had never seemed as if his father would die. Of course all men die, but his father had been like a rock that never aged and was always there, wise, ordering, approving, almost