daughter, and in her listening wakefulness she had heard him
turn restlessly in bed. Insomnia loves company as does misery. Presently
the colonel arose, and the strong smell of Virginia tobacco and the
monotonous pad, pad of list slippers made themselves apparent.

Sue threw on a dressing-gown and entered her father's room. He was in a
light green bathrobe, his white hair tousled like sea-foam as he passed
and repassed his gaunt fingers through it.

"I can't sleep," said the girl simply. She cuddled in a big armchair,
her feet tucked under her.

He put a hand on her shoulder. "I can't, either," he said, and laughed
a little, as if incapable of understanding the reason. "I think late
eating doesn't agree with me. It must have been the deviled crab."

"Mr. Waterbury?" suggested Sue.

"Eh?" Then Colonel Desha frowned, coughed, and finally laughed. "Still a
child, I see," he added, with a deprecating shake of the head. "Will you
ever grow up?"

"Yes--when you recognize that I have." She pressed her cheek against the
hand on her shoulder.

Sue practically managed the entire house, looking after the servants,
expenses, and all, but the colonel always referred to her as "my little
girl." He was under the amiable delusion that time had left her at the
ten-mile mark, never to return.

This was one of but many defects in his vision. He was oblivious of
materialistic facts. He was innocent of the ways of finance. He had come
of a prodigal race of spenders, not accumulators. Away back somewhere
in the line there must have existed what New Englanders term a "good
provider," but that virtue had not descended from father to son. The
original vast Desha estates decreased with every generation, seldom a
descendant making even a spasmodic effort to replenish them. There was
always a mortgage or sale in progress. Sometimes a lucrative as well as
love-marriage temporarily increased the primal funds, but more often the
opposite was the case.

The Deshas, like all true Southerners, believed that love was the only
excuse for marriage; just as most Northerners believe that labor is the
only excuse for living. And so the colonel, with no business incentive,
acumen, or adaptability, and with the inherited handicap of a luxurious
living standard, made a brave onslaught on his patrimony.

What the original estate was, or to what extent the colonel had
encroached upon it, Sue never rightly knew. She had been brought up
in the old faith