owed money from him the sort of thing
a gentleman could or could not do for a living. But on the subject of
what a lady might do he still held fixed and unalterable notions; nor
did he ever find it tiresome to hear his own daughter expound the axioms
of this subject with a finality he had taught her in her youth. Having
freed himself from fine-gentlemanism, he had quite unconsciously fallen
the more easily a prey to fine-ladyism; all his conservatism had gone
into that, as a man, forced to give up his garden, might cherish one
lovely potted plant.

At a time when private schools were beginning to flourish once more he
had been careful to educate Adelaide entirely at home with governesses.
Every summer he took her abroad, and showed her, and talked with her
about, books, pictures, and buildings; he inoculated her with such
fundamentals as that a lady never wears imitation lace on her
underclothes, and the past of the verb to "eat" is pronounced to rhyme
with "bet." She spoke French and German fluently, and could read Italian.
He considered her a perfectly educated woman. She knew nothing of
business, political economy, politics, or science. He himself had never
been deeply interested in American politics, though very familiar with
the lives of English statesmen. He was a great reader of memoirs and of
the novels of Disraeli and Trollope. Of late he had taken to motoring.

He kissed his daughter and nodded--a real New York nod--to his
son-in-law.

"I've come to tell you, Adelaide," he began.

"Such a thing!" murmured Mathilde, shaking her golden head above the cup
of tea she was making for him, making in just the way he liked; for she
was a little person who remembered people's tastes.

"I thought you'd rather hear it than read it in the papers."

"Goodness, Papa, you talk as if you had been getting married!"

"No." Mr. Lanley hesitated, and looked up at her brightly. "No; but I
think I did have a proposal the other day."

"From Mrs. Baxter?" asked Adelaide. This was almost war. Mrs. Baxter was
a regal and possessive widow from Baltimore whose long and regular visits
to Mr. Lanley had once occasioned his family some alarm, though time had
now given them a certain institutional safety.

Her father was not flurried by the reference.

"No," he said; "though she writes me, I'm glad to say, that she is
coming soon."

"You don't tell me!" said Adelaide. The cream of the winter season was
usually the time Mrs. Baxte