es,
and love them as well as our ancestors ever did. We wouldn't change a
line of their stately old pillars or a pebble of their darling homey
gardens. Do you wonder we resent their passing to people who don't care
for them in the Southern way?"

"But suppose the newcomers _do_ care for them?"

Her lips curled. "A young millionaire who has lived all his life in New
York, to care for Damory Court! A youth idiotically rich, brought up in
a superheated atmosphere of noise and money!"

He started uncontrollably. So that was what she thought! He felt himself
flushing. He had wondered what would be his impression of the
neighborhood and its people; their possible opinion of himself had never
occurred to him.

"Why," she went on, "he's never cared enough about the place even to
come and see it. For reasons of his own--good enough ones, perhaps,
according to the papers,--he finds himself tired of the city. I can
imagine him reflecting." With a mocking simulation of a brown-study, she
put her hand to her brow, pushing impatiently back the wayward luster:
"'Let me see. Don't I own an estate somewhere in the South? Ah-ha! yes.
If I remember, it's in Virginia. I'll send down and fix up the old
hovel.' Then he telephones for his architect to run down and see what
'improvements' it needs. And--here you are!"

He laughed shortly--a tribute to her mimicry--but it was a difficult
laugh. The desperately ennuyee pose, the lax drawl, the unaccustomed
mental effort and the sudden self-congratulatory "ah-ha!"--hitting off
to a hair the lackadaisical boredom of the haplessly rich young
boulevardier--this was the countryside's pen-picture of _him_!

"Don't you consider a longing for nature a wholesome sign?"

"Perhaps. The vagaries of the rich are always suggestive."

"You think there's no chance of his choosing to stay here because he
actually likes it?"

"Not the slightest," she said indifferently.

"You are so certain of this without ever having seen him?"

She glanced at him covertly, annoyedly sensible of the impropriety of
the discussion, since the man discussed was certainly his patron, maybe
his friend. But his insistence had roused a certain balky wilfulness
that would have its way. "It's true I've never seen him," she said, "but
I've read about him a hundred times in the Sunday supplements. He's a
regular feature of the high-roller section. His idea of a good time is a
dog-banquet at Sherry's. Why, a girl told me once th