trings, and although Aunt Victoria quite roused
herself at the sight of him, he received his introduction to her with
reprehensible indifference. He sank into a chair and looked sadly at
the fire, taking the point of his white beard in his long, tapering
fingers. Professor Marshall turned from the piano, where he sat,
striking A for the conscientious Bauermeister to tune, and said
laughingly, "Hey there, Knight of the Dolorous Countenance, what
vulture is doing business at the old stand on your liver?"

Professor Kennedy crossed one long, elegantly slim leg over the other,
"I've been dining with the Kennedy family," he said, with a neat and
significant conciseness.

"Anything specially the matter with the predatory rich?" queried
Marshall, reaching for his viola-case.

Professor Kennedy shook his head. "Alas! there's never anything the
matter with them. _Comme le diable, ils se portent toujours bien_."

At the purity of accent with which this embittered remark was made,
Mrs. Marshall-Smith opened her eyes, and paid more attention as the
old professor went on.

"The last of my unmarried nieces has shown herself a true Kennedy by
providing herself with a dolichocephalic blond of a husband, like all
the others. The dinner was given in honor of the engagement."

Sylvia was accustomed to finding Professor Kennedy's remarks quite
unintelligible, and this one seemed no odder to her than the rest, so
that she was astonished that Aunt Victoria was not ashamed to confess
as blank an ignorance as the little girl's. The beautiful woman leaned
toward the morose old man with the suave self-confidence of one who
has never failed to charm, and drew his attention to her by a laugh
of amused perplexity. "May I ask," she inquired, "_what_ kind of a
husband is that? It is a new variety to me."

Professor Kennedy looked at her appraisingly. "It's the kind most
women aspire to," he answered enigmatically. He imparted to this
obscure remark the air of passing a sentence of condemnation.

Sylvia's mother stirred uneasily in her chair and looked at her
husband. He had begun to take his viola from the case, but now
returned it and stood looking quizzically from his sister to his
guest. "Professor Kennedy talks a special language, Vic," he said
lightly. "Some day he'll make a book of it and be famous. He divides
us all into two kinds: the ones that get what they want by taking it
away from other people--those are the dolichocephalic blon