tell that you are a lady or take a daily bath."

"Our ancestors," said Aunt Maude solemnly, "are our heritage from the
past--but you have reverence for nothing."

"They were a jolly old lot," Eve agreed, "and I am proud of them. But
some of their descendants are a scream. If men had their minds on being
ancestors instead of bragging of them there'd be some hope for the future
of old families."

Aunt Maude, having been swathed by her maid in a silk scarf, so that her
head was stiff with it, batted her eyes. "If you would go with me," she
said, "and hear some of the speeches, you might look at it differently.
Now there was a Van Tromp----"

"And in New England there were Codcapers, and in Virginia there were
Pantops. I take off my hat to them, but not to their descendants,
indiscriminately."

And now Aunt Maude, more than ever mummified in a gold and black brocade
wrap trimmed with black fur, steered her uncertain way toward the motor
at the door.

"People in my time----" floated over her shoulder and then as the door
closed behind her, her eloquence was lost.

Eve, alone, faced a radiant prospect. Richard was coming. He had
telephoned. She had not told Aunt Maude. She wanted him to herself.

When at last he arrived she positively crowed over him. "Oh, Dicky, this
is darling of you."

A shadow fell across her face, however, when he told her why he had come.

"Austin wanted me with him in an operation. He telegraphed me and I took
the first train. I have been here for two days without a minute's time in
which to call you up."

"I thought that perhaps you had come to see me."

"Seeing you is a pleasant part of it, Eve."

He was really glad to see her; to be drawn away by it all from the
somberness of his thoughts. The night before he had left the train on the
Jersey side and had ferried over so that he might view once more the
sky-line of the great city. There had been a stiff breeze blowing and it
had seemed to him that he drew the first full breath since the moment
when he had walked with Geoffrey in the wood. What had followed had been
like a dream; the knowledge that the great surgeon wanted him, his
mother's quick service in helping him pack his bag, the walk to Bower's
in the fragrant dark to catch the ten o'clock train; the moment on the
porch at Bower's when he had learned from a word dropped by Beulah that
Anne was on the river with Geoffrey.

And now it all seemed so far away--the river with the