rshipped him every minute of her life? Most
of us would!"

"Isn't he worth worshipping? Just look at him! Isn't he charming with
Lucy! See how hard he ran to get it when she dropped her handkerchief
back there."

"Oh, I'm not going to argue with you about George!" said Miss Fanny.
"I'm fond enough of him, for that matter. He can be charming, and he's
certainly stunning looking, if only--"

"Let the 'if only' go, dear," Isabel suggested good-naturedly. "Let's
talk about that dinner you thought I should--"

"I?" Miss Fanny interrupted quickly. "Didn't you want to give it
yourself?"

"Indeed, I did, my dear!" said Isabel heartily. "I only meant that
unless you had proposed it, perhaps I wouldn't--"

But here Eugene came for her to dance, and she left the sentence
uncompleted. Holiday dances can be happy for youth renewed as well as
for youth in bud--and yet it was not with the air of a rival that Miss
Fanny watched her brother's wife dancing with the widower. Miss Fanny's
eyes narrowed a little, but only as if her mind engaged in a hopeful
calculation. She looked pleased.

Chapter X

A few days after George's return to the university it became evident
that not quite everybody had gazed with complete benevolence upon the
various young collegians at their holiday sports. The Sunday edition
of the principal morning paper even expressed some bitterness under the
heading, "Gilded Youths of the Fin-de-Siecle"--this was considered the
knowing phrase of the time, especially for Sunday supplements--and there
is no doubt that from certain references in this bit of writing some
people drew the conclusion that Mr. George Amberson Minafer had not yet
got his comeuppance, a postponement still irritating. Undeniably, Fanny
Minafer was one of the people who drew this conclusion, for she cut the
article out and enclosed it in a letter to her nephew, having written on
the border of the clipping, "I wonder whom it can mean!"

George read part of it.

We debate sometimes what is to be the future of this nation when we
think that in a few years public affairs may be in the hands of the
fin-de-siecle gilded youths we see about us during the Christmas
holidays. Such foppery, such luxury, such insolence, was surely never
practised by the scented, overbearing patricians of the Palatine, even
in Rome's most decadent epoch. In all the wild orgy of wastefulness and
luxury with which the nineteenth century reaches its close, the