ac for a buttonhole. He had never heard of any woman, white or black,
using sumac for a bouquet. Why should this Cissie Dildine trig herself
out in sumac?

The Captain's suspicions came to a point like a setter. He began
sniffing about for Cissie's motives in choosing so queer an ornament. He
wondered if it had anything to do with Peter Siner.

All his life, Captain Renfrew's brain had been deliberate. He moved
mentally, as he did physically, with dignity. To tell the truth, the
Captain's thoughts had a way of absolutely stopping now and then, and
for a space he would view the world as a simple collection of colored
surfaces without depth or meaning. During these intervals, by a sort of
irony of the gods the old gentleman's face wore a look of philosophic
concentration, so that his mental hiatuses had given him a reputation
for profundity, which was county wide. It had been this, years before,
that had carried him by a powerful majority into the Tennessee
legislature. The voters agreed, almost to a man, that they preferred
depth to a shallow facility. The rival candidate had been shallow and
facile. The polls returned the Captain, and the young gentleman--for the
Captain was a young gentleman in those days--was launched on a typical
politician's career. But some Republican member from east Tennessee had
impugned the rising statesman's honor with some sort of improper
liaison. In those days there seemed to be proper and improper liaisons.
There had been a duel on the banks of the Cumberland River in which the
Captain succeeded in wounding his traducer in the arm, and was thus
vindicated by the gods. But the incident ended a career that might very
well have wound up in the governor's chair, or even in the United States
Senate, considering how very deliberate the Captain was mentally.

To-day, as the Captain walked up the street following Cissie Dildine,
one of these vacant moods fell upon him and it was not until they had
reached his own gate that it suddenly occurred to the old gentleman just
what Cissie's sumac did mean. It was a signal to Peter. The simplicity
of the solution stirred the old man. Its meaning was equally easy to
fathom. When a woman signals any man it conveys consent. Denials receive
no signals; they are inferred. In this particular case Captain Renfrew
found every reason to believe that this flaring bit of sumac was the
prelude to an elopement.

In the window of his library the Captain saw his secre