"To you?" Diane uttered the words in increasing wonder. It was strange
that a first role in the drama could be played by any one but herself.

"I've always thought it a little odd," Mrs. Eveleth observed, after a
brief pause, "that you've never been interested to hear about our
family."

"I didn't know there was anything to tell," Diane answered, innocently.

"I suppose there isn't, from your European point of view; but, as we
Americans see things, there's a good deal that's significant. Foreigners
care so little about who or what we are, so long as we have money."

Diane raised her hand in a gesture of deprecation, intimating that such
was not her attitude of mind.

"And I've never wanted to bore you with what, after all, wasn't
necessary for you to hear. I shouldn't do so now if it had not become
important. There's a great deal to settle and arrange."

"I can understand that there must be business affairs," Diane murmured,
for the sake of saying something.

"Exactly; and in order to make them clear to you, I must take you a
little further back into our history than you've ever gone before. I
want you to see how much more responsible I am than you for our
calamity. You were born into this life of Paris, while I came into it of
my own accord. You did nothing but yield naturally to the influences
around you, while I accepted them after having been fully warned. If you
knew a little more of our American ideals I should find it easier to
explain."

"I should like to hear about them," Diane said, sympathetically. The new
interest was beginning to take her out of herself.

"My husband and I," Mrs. Eveleth went on again, "belong to that New York
element which dates back to the time when the city was New Amsterdam,
and the State, the New Netherlands. To you that means nothing, but in
America it tells much. I was Naomi de Ruyter; my husband, on his
mother's side, was a Van Tromp."

"Really?" Diane murmured, feeling that Mrs. Eveleth's tone of pride
required a response. "I know there's a Mr. van Tromp here--the American
banker."

"He is of the same family as my husband's mother. For nearly three
hundred years they've lived on the island of Manhattan, and seen their
farms and pastures grow into the second city in the world. The world has
poured in on them, literally in millions. It would have submerged them
if there hadn't been something in that old stock that couldn't be kept
down. However high the tide rose, th