any other expensive trinket or knickknack which
Patricia desired. But he had never viewed the match with enthusiasm.

Now, though, old Stapylton exulted. His daughter--half a Vartrey
already--would become by marriage a Musgrave of Matocton, no less. Pat's
carriage would roll up and down the oak-shaded avenue from which he had
so often stepped aside with an uncovered head, while gentlemen and
ladies cantered by; and it would be Pat's children that would play about
the corridors of the old house at whose doors he had lived so
long,--those awe-inspiring corridors, which he had very rarely entered,
except on Christmas Day and other recognized festivities, when, dressed
to the nines, the overseer and his uneasy mother were by immemorial
custom made free of the mansion, with every slave upon the big
plantation.

"They were good days, sir," he chuckled. "Heh, we'll stick to the old
customs. We'll give a dinner and announce it at dessert, just as your
honored grandfather did your Aunt Constantia's betrothal--"

For about the Musgraves of Matocton there could be no question. It was
the old man's delight to induce Rudolph Musgrave to talk concerning his
ancestors; and Stapylton soon had their history at his finger-tips. He
could have correctly blazoned every tincture in their armorial bearings
and have explained the origin of every rampant, counter-changed or
couchant beast upon the shield.

He knew it was the _Bona Nova_ in the November of 1619,--for the first
Musgrave had settled in Virginia, prior to his removal to
Lichfield,--which had the honor of transporting the forebear of this
family into America. Stapylton could have told you offhand which scions
of the race had represented this or that particular county in the House
of Burgesses, and even for what years; which three of them were
Governors, and which of them had served as officers of the State Line in
the Revolution; and, in fine, was more than satisfied to have his
daughter play Penelophon to Colonel Musgrave's debonair mature Cophetua.

In a word, Roger Stapylton had acquiesced to the transferal of his
daughter's affections with the peculiar equanimity of a properly reared
American parent. He merely stipulated that, since his business affairs
prevented an indefinite stay in Lichfield, Colonel Musgrave should
presently remove to New York City, where the older man held ready for
him a purely ornamental and remunerative position with the Insurance
Company of which R