strength. Major Grandpa is
talking more and more pointedly about the Morgan mares, and is growing a
habit of comparison-drawing in which America profits at the expense of
Europe; so I suppose by the time you are reading this we shall have made
our sailing arrangements. Nevertheless, the Naples invitation is dying
hard. Eva seems to have set her heart on having us for the winter."

Ardea's figure of speech was no figure. The palazzo-sharing invitation
did die hard; and when Miss Farley's letters failed, Mr. Vincent Farley
made a journey to Paris for the express purpose of persuading the
Dabneys to reconsider. Miss Euphrasia was neutral. The Major was
homesick for a sight of his native Southland, but for Ardea's sake he
generously concealed the symptoms--or thought he did. So the decision
was finally left to Ardea.

She said no, and adhered to it, partly because she knew her grandfather
was pining for Paradise, and partly on her own account. Ardea at twenty
was a young woman who might have made King Solomon pause with suspended
pen when he was writing that saying about his inability to find one
woman among a thousand. She was not beautiful beyond compare, as the
Southern young woman is so likely to be under the pencil of her loyal
limners. She had the Dabney nose, which was not quite classical, and the
Courtenay mouth, well-lined and expressive, rather than too suggestive,
of feminine softness. But her eyes were beautiful, and her luxuriant
masses of copper-gold hair fitted her shapely head like a glorious
aureole; also, she had that indefinable adorableness called charm, and
the sweet, direct, childlike frankness of speech which is its
characteristic.

This was the external Ardea, known of men, and of those women who were
large-minded enough not to envy her. But the inner Ardea was a being
apart--high-seated, alone, self-sufficient in the sense that it saw too
clearly to be hoodwinked, infinitely reasonable, with vision unclouded
either by passion or the conventions. This inner Ardea knew Vincent
Farley better than he knew himself: the small mind, the mask of outward
correctness, the coldness of heart, the utter lack of the heroic
soul-strength which, even in a brutal man, may sometimes draw and
conquer and merge within itself the woman-soul that, yielding, still
yields open-eyed and undeceived.

He was the most moderate of lovers, as such a man must needs be, but his
anxiety to second the wishes of his father and s