cuse him if
he wished to get back to his work.

He discovered that, somehow, the three had finished supper; and,
somehow, he presently discovered himself in his study, where eight
o'clock had found him every evening for the last ten years, when he was
not about his social diversions. An old custom, you will observe, is not
lightly broken.

VI

Subsequently: "I have never approved of these international marriages,"
said Colonel Musgrave, with heat. "It stands to reason, she is simply
marrying the fellow for his title. _(The will of Jeremiah Brown, dated
29 November, 1690, recorded 2 February, 1690-1, mentions his wife Eliza
Brown and appoints her his executrix.)_ She can't possibly care for him.
_(This, then, was the second wife of Edward Osborne of Henrico, who,
marrying him 15 June, 1694, died before January, 1696-7.)_ But they are
all flibbertigibbets, every one of them. _(She had apparently no
children by either marriage--)_ And I dare say she is no better than the
rest."

Came a tap on the door. Followed a vision of soft white folds and
furbelows and semi-transparencies and purple eyes and a pouting mouth.

"I am become like a pelican in the wilderness, Olaf," the owner of these
vanities complained. "Are you very busy? Cousin Agatha is about her
housekeeping, and I have read the afternoon paper all through,--even the
list of undelivered letters and the woman's page,--and I just want to
see the Gilbert Stuart picture," she concluded,--exercising, one is
afraid, a certain economy in regard to the truth.

This was a little too much. If a man's working-hours are not to be
respected--if his privacy is to be thus invaded on the flimsiest of
pretexts,--why, then, one may very reasonably look for chaos to come
again. This, Rudolph Musgrave decided, was a case demanding firm and
instant action. Here was a young person who needed taking down a peg or
two, and that at once.

But he made the mistake of looking at her first. And after that, he lied
glibly. "Good Lord, no! I am not in the least busy now. In fact, I was
just about to look you two up."

"I was rather afraid of disturbing you." She hesitated; and a lucent
mischief woke in her eyes. "You are so patriarchal, Olaf," she lamented.
"I felt like a lion venturing into a den of Daniels. But if you cross
your heart you aren't really busy--why, then, you can show me the
Stuart, Olaf."

It is widely conceded that Gilbert Stuart never in his after work
surp