bly but not elegantly. They went
back for two generations. Beyond that the Flippins had no family tree.

Mary had seen the family tree at Huntersfield. It was rooted in
aristocratic soil. There were Huguenot branches and Royalist
branches--D'Aubignes and Moncures, Peytons and Carys, Randolphs and
Lees. And to match every name there was more than one portrait on the
walls of Huntersfield.

Mary remembered a day when she and Truxton Beaufort had stood in the
wide hall.

"A great old bunch," Truxton had said.

"If they were my ancestors I should be afraid of them."

"Why, Mary?"

"Oh, they'd expect so much of me."

"Oh, that," Truxton said airily, "who cares what they expect?"

Mr. and Mrs. Flippin came home in time for supper. The nurse had arrived
and the surgeons would follow in the morning. "It's dreadful, Mary,"
Mrs. Flippin said, "to see her poor husband; money isn't everything. And
he loves her as much as if they were poor."

Daisy washed the dishes in a perfect whirl of energy, donned her
high-heeled slippers and her Washington manner, and went off with John.
It was late that night when Mrs. Flippin went out to find Mary busy.

"My dear," she said, "what are you doing?"

Mary was rolling out pastry, with ice in a ginger-ale bottle. "I am
going to make some tarts. There was a can of raspberries left--and--and
well--I'm just hungry for--raspberry tarts, Mother."

III

It was the Judge who told Becky that Dalton had not gone. "Mrs. Waterman
is very ill, and they are all staying down."

Becky showed no sign of what the news meant to her, but that night pride
and love fought in the last ditch. It seemed to Becky that with Dalton
at King's Crest the agony of the situation was intensified.

"Oh, why should I care?" she kept asking herself as she sat late by her
window. "He doesn't. And I have known him only three weeks. Why should
he count so much?"

She knew that he counted to the measure of her own constancy. "I can't
bear it," she said over and over again pitifully, as the hours passed.
"I think I shall--die."

It seemed to her that she wanted more than anything in the whole wide
world to see him for a moment--to hear the quick voice--to meet the
sparkle of his glance.

Well, why not? If she called him--he would come. She was sure of that.
He was staying away because he thought that she cared. And he didn't
want her to care. But he was not really--cruel--and if she called
him----

She wander