go to the
post with at least four stamps on it, for since you have yoked me to a
stub pen and begged me not to criss-cross the sheets, my bills for stamps
and stationery have increased.

"Sylvia Latham _is_ the daughter of your Bluff people. Her father's name
is Sylvester Johns Latham, and he is a Wall Street broker and promoter,
with a deal of money, and ability for pulling the wires, but not much
liked socially, I should judge,--that is, outside of a certain
commercial group.

"Mrs. Latham was, at the time of her marriage, a pretty southern girl,
Vivian Carhart, with only a face for a fortune. In a way she is a
beautiful woman now, has quite a social following, a gift for
entertaining, and, I judge, unbounded vanity and ambition.

"Quite recently some apparently valueless western land, belonging to her
people, has developed fabulous ore, and they say that she is now more
opulent than her husband.

"They were pewholders at St. Jacob's for many years, until three
seasons ago, when they moved from a side street near Washington Square
to 'Millionaire Row,' on the east side of the Park. There are two
children, Sylvia, the younger, and a son, Carhart, a fine-looking blond
fellow when I knew him, but who got into some bad scrape the year after
he left college,--a gambling debt, I think, that his father repudiated,
and sent him to try ranch life in the West. There was a good deal of
talk at the time, and it was said that the boy fell into bad company at
his mother's own card table, and that it has caused a chilliness
between Mr. and Mrs. Latham.

"However it may be, Sylvia, who is an unspoiled girl of the frank and
intellectual type, tall, and radiant with warm-hearted health, was kept
much away at boarding-school for three years, and then went to college
for a special two years' course in literature. She had barely returned
home when her mother, hearing that I was going abroad, asked me to take
Sylvia with me, as she was deficient in languages, which would be a
drawback to her social career.

"It seemed a trifle strange to me, as she was then nineteen, an age when
most girls of her class are brought out, and had been away for
practically five years. But I took her gladly, and she has been a most
lovable companion and friend. She called me Aunt, to overcome the formal
Miss, and I wish she were my daughter. I'm only wondering if her high,
unworldly standpoint, absorbed from wise teachers, and the halo that she
has cons