What surprises me in her behaviour," said he, "is its
thoroughness. Woman seldom does things by halves, but often
by doubles."

--SOLOMON SINGLEWITZ: The Life of Adam.

Beekman De Peyster was probably the most passionate and triumphant
fisherman in the Petrine Club. He angled with the same dash and
confidence that he threw into his operations in the stock-market. He was
sure to be the first man to get his flies on the water at the opening of
the season. And when we came together for our fall meeting, to compare
notes of our wanderings on various streams and make up the fish-stories
for the year, Beekman was almost always "high hook." We expected, as
a matter of course, to hear that he had taken the most and the largest
fish.

It was so with everything that he undertook. He was a masterful man.
If there was an unusually large trout in a river, Beekman knew about it
before any one else, and got there first, and came home with the fish.
It did not make him unduly proud, because there was nothing uncommon
about it. It was his habit to succeed, and all the rest of us were
hardened to it.

When he married Cornelia Cochrane, we were consoled for our partial loss
by the apparent fitness and brilliancy of the match. If Beekman was a
masterful man, Cornelia was certainly what you might call a mistressful
woman. She had been the head of her house since she was eighteen years
old. She carried her good looks like the family plate; and when she came
into the breakfast-room and said good-morning, it was with an air as if
she presented every one with a check for a thousand dollars. Her tastes
were accepted as judgments, and her preferences had the force of laws.
Wherever she wanted to go in the summer-time, there the finger of
household destiny pointed. At Newport, at Bar Harbour, at Lenox, at
Southampton, she made a record. When she was joined in holy wedlock to
Beekman De Peyster, her father and mother heaved a sigh of satisfaction,
and settled down for a quiet vacation in Cherry Valley.

It was in the second summer after the wedding that Beekman admitted to
a few of his ancient Petrine cronies, in moments of confidence
(unjustifiable, but natural), that his wife had one fault.

"It is not exactly a fault," he said, "not a positive fault, you know.
It is just a kind of a defect, due to her education, of course. In
everything else she's magnificent. But she does n't care for
fishing. She says it's stupid,--can'