eam of words, and if her days in New York were trying to her
body and burdened with homesickness for her heart, no one--not even St.
George himself--had ever surprised so much as a passing shadow upon her
face. The young man's untiring pursuit of managers and of players had
left her continually alone, but she busied herself cheerfully about her
housekeeping, and found diversion in yielding to an inordinate curiosity
concerning her neighbours. Once or twice she had questioned him about
his absence, and this was especially so the morning after his meeting
with Laura Wilde.

"You didn't tell me where you were yesterday, St. George," she observed
at breakfast; "did you meet any one who is likely to be of use? I
remember Beverly Pierce told me that everything had to come through
introductions in the North."

He looked at her steadily a moment before replying, taking in all the
lovely details of her appearance behind the coffee tray--the morning
sunlight on her white hair and on the massive, hand-beaten, old silver
service, the solitary rose he had purchased in the street standing
between them in a slender Bohemian vase, brought from the rare old china
in the press just at her back, the dainty hemstitching on her collar and
cuffs of fine thread cambric, and lastly the vivid spot of color made by
the knitting she had laid aside.

"I met Laura Wilde," he answered presently, "but as you never read
poetry you can't understand just what it means."

As she held the cream jug poised above his coffee cup Mrs. Trent smiled
back at him with a placid wonder.

"Who is she, my son? A lady--I mean a _real_ one?"

"Oh, yes, sterling."

"But she writes verse you say! Is it improper?"

His eyes shone with amusement. "Improper! Why, what an idea!"

"I'm sure I don't know how it is," responded his mother, carefully
measuring with her eye the correct allowance of cream, "but somehow
women always seem to get immodest when they take to verse. It's as if
they went into it for the express purpose of airing their
improprieties."

"I say!" he exclaimed, with gentle mockery, "have you been reading
'Sappho' at your age?"

She continued to regard him blandly, without so much as a flicker of
humour in her serene blue eyes. "Your grandfather used to be very fond
of quoting something from 'Sappho,'" she returned thoughtfully, "or was
it from Mr. Pope? I can't remember which or what it was except that it
was hardly the kind of thing you would r