until she
attempts to live in the same house with them."

"I thank you," said Mr. Charteris, "for the high opinion you entertain
of my moral character." He bestowed a reproachful sigh upon her, and
continued: "At any rate, Rudolph Musgrave has been an unusually lucky
man--the luckiest that I know of."

Patricia had risen as if to go. She turned her big purple eyes on him
for a moment.

"You--you think so?" she queried, hesitatingly.

Afterward she spread out her hands in a helpless gesture, and laughed
for no apparent reason, and sat down again.

"Why?" said Patricia.

It took Charteris fully an hour to point out all the reasons.

Patricia told him very frankly that she considered him to be talking
nonsense, but she seemed quite willing to listen.

II

Sunset was approaching on the following afternoon when Rudolph Musgrave,
fresh from Lichfield,--whither, as has been recorded, the bringing out
of the July number of the _Lichfield Historical Associations Quarterly
Magazine_ had called him,--came out on the front porch at Matocton. He
had arrived on the afternoon train, about an hour previously, in time to
superintend little Roger's customary evening transactions with an
astounding quantity of bread and milk; and, Roger abed, his father,
having dressed at once for supper, found himself ready for that meal
somewhat in advance of the rest of the house-party.

Indeed, only one of them was visible at this moment--a woman, who was
reading on a rustic bench some distance from the house, and whose back
was turned to him. The poise of her head, however, was not unfamiliar;
also, it is not everyone who has hair that is like a nimbus of
thrice-polished gold.

Colonel Musgrave threw back his shoulders, and drew a deep breath.
Subsequently, with a fine air of unconcern, he inspected the view from
the porch, which was, in fact, quite worthy of his attention.
Interesting things have happened at Matocton--many events that have been
preserved in the local mythology, not always to the credit of the old
Musgraves, and a few which have slipped into a modest niche in history.
It was, perhaps, on these that Colonel Musgrave pondered so intently.

Once the farthingaled and red-heeled gentry came in sluggish barges to
Matocton, and the broad river on which the estate faces was thick with
bellying sails; since the days of railroads, one approaches the mansion
through the maple-grove in the rear, and enters ignominiously b