d never since the day of her awakening
mentioned the name of her faithless or unfortunate lover, but her silent
magnanimity had become the expression of a reproach too deep for words,
and her bitter scorn of men had so grown upon her in her cloistral
existence that there were hours together when she could not endure even
the inoffensive Percival. Cold, white, and spectral as one of the long
slim candles on an altar, still beautiful with an indignant and wounded
loveliness, she had become in the end at once the shame and the romance
of her family.

"There is no reason under the sun why Aunt Angela shouldn't come down to
dinner with us to-night," persisted Laura. "Don't you see that by
encouraging her as you did in her foolish attitude, you have given her
past power over her for life and death. It is wrong--it is ignoble to
bow down and worship anything--man, woman, child, or event, as she bows
down and worships her trouble."

The flute shook on Uncle Percival's knees. "Ah, Laura, would you have
her face the world again?" he asked.

"The world? Nonsense! The world doesn't know there's such a person in
it. She was forgotten forty years ago, only she has grown so selfish in
her grief that she can never believe it."

The old man sighed and shook his head. "The women of this generation
have had the dew brushed off them," he lamented, "but your mother
understood. She felt for Angela."

"And yet it was an old story when my mother came here."

"Some things never grow old, my dear, and shame is one of them."

Laura dismissed the assertion with a shrug of scornful protest, and
turned the conversation at once into another channel. "Am I anything
like my mother, Uncle Percival?" she asked abruptly.

For a moment the old man pondered the question in silence, his little
red hands fingering the mouth of his flute.

"You have the Creole hair and the Creole voice," he replied; "but for
the rest you are your father's child, every inch of you."

"My mother was beautiful, I suppose?"

"Your father thought so, but as for me she was too little and
passionate. I can see her now when she would fly into one of her spasms
because somebody had crossed her or been impolite without knowing it."

"They got on badly then--I mean afterward."

"What could you expect, my dear? It was just after the War, and, though
she loved your father, she never in her heart of hearts forgave him his
blue uniform. There was no reason in her--she was all