that brought out the
watery reflections of old Sheraton as even the ancient horsehair had not
done; the silver candlesticks, the miniatures, and on the mantel those
two royal flower-pots whose precarious existence was to his aunt a very
fearful joy. Even the tortoise-shell cat, sprawled between the two
figures like a tiny tiger-skin, was in the picture. It was a room that
gently put you into your place. Hugh recalled with a faint grin certain
meetings here of philanthropic ladies whose paths had seldom turned into
the interiors of older Beacon Street. The state of life to which it had
pleased their Maker to call them, he reflected, would express itself
preferably in gilding and vast pale-tinted upholstery and pink
bibelots--oh, quite a lot of pink. This place had worried them into a
condition of disconcerted awe.

He tried to fancy what it was going to do to the unbidden, resented
guest. A queer protest against its enmity, an impulse to give her a
square deal, surged up in him from nowhere. After all, whatever else she
might be, she was Uncle Hugh's girl. Like all the world, Hugh loved the
dispossessed lover. He knew what it felt like. One does not reach the
mature age of twenty-four without having at least begun the passionate
pilgrimage. His few tindery and tinselly affairs suspected of following
the obvious formula: three parts curiosity, three parts the literary
sense, three parts crude young impulse, one part distilled moonshine.
The real love of his life had been Uncle Hugh.

He sprang up with an abruptness to which his elders seemed to be used.
He stopped before a brass-trimmed desk and jerked at the second drawer.
"Where are those letters, sir?"

"You mean--"

"Yes, the one you wrote her about the money, and her answer. You put
them with his papers, didn't you? Where's the key?"

The older man drew from his waistcoat pocket a carved bit of brass.
"What do you want with them?" he asked, cautiously.

"I want to refresh my memory--and Aunt Maria's." He took out a neat
little pile of papers and began to sort them intently. "Here they are on
top." He laid out a docketed envelope on the desk. "And here are the
essays and poems that you wouldn't publish. I considered them the best
things he ever did."

"You were not his literary executor," said his uncle, coldly. Another
stifled glance passed between the seniors, but this time Miss Maria made
no effort to restore the gloss of the surface. She sat idle, staring