. I think I could help you."

Jack, inwardly raging, flushed and glanced at her uncertainly.

"Thank you," he said, "I 'll consider--I--I 'll let you know."

"Hang her," he said to himself as he walked toward the garage.
"Deliver me from an old woman who thinks she has a sense of humor."

Ronald Wellington was a man past fifty, a man whose stature was as
large as his mind. He had a shock of gray hair; brilliant hazel eyes
like Anne's, but overshadowed by shaggy brows; high cheek bones, and
straight lips hidden by a heavy gray mustache. It was said of him that
his clothing was only pressed when new and that he purchased a new hat
only under the combined pressure of his wife and daughter. He had an
immense voice which could be gruff or pleasing, as he willed; in all, a
big, strong, wholesome personality, unconventional, but in no sense
unrefined. He was in striking contrast to his dapper crony, Robert
Marie, who accompanied him from the yacht, a man whose distinction lay
in his family, his courtly manners of the old school, and his
connoisseurship of wines.

Mrs. Wellington waited on the veranda, but Anne, her brothers, and Sara
were at the landing as the gangway of the yacht was lowered. Ronald
Wellington seized Anne by the elbows, an old trick of his, and as she
stiffened them he lifted her to his face and kissed her. Ronald he
slapped on the back, and as for the more sturdy little Royal, he lifted
him high in the air and placed him on his shoulder, smiling and nodding
pleasantly to Sara. Sara waited for Robert Marie, and thus the party
walked to the house. Mrs. Wellington advanced to the rail, smiling,
and her husband, setting Royal on the ground, reached up, seized her
hands, and drew her face down to his.

"Well, girl," he said, "glad to see me?"

She withdrew her lips and as Sara looked at her, with perhaps a little
pathos in her eyes, she saw, spreading over her face that expression,
the beauty and charm and inspiration of which are ever the same, in
youth and in age, in the countenances of those in whom love still
abides unchanging.

They sat on the porch for a few minutes and then, having breakfasted on
the _Mayfair_, Mr. Wellington went to his study off the library, where
Mrs. Wellington joined him.

"Well, Ronald," she said, "Prince Koltsoff is here."

"Yes," he said, "so you--and the newspapers have told me. What is
he--another Ivan?"

"Not in any way. He and Anne seem to be getting on