ally sweet and charming fellow he
was until that morning, when he took her aside and told her of his
engagement.

"Do you know," he said, "it is as though life had stopped for me many
years ago when Geraldine and I were playmates; it's exactly as though
all the interval of years in between counted less than a dream, and now,
at last, I am awake and taking up real life again.... You see, Kathleen,
as a matter of fact, I'm incomplete by myself. I'm only half of a suit
of clothes; Geraldine always wore the rest of me."

"However," said Kathleen mischievously, "you've been very tireless in
trying on, they say. It's astonishing you never found a good fit----"

"That was all part of the dream interval," he interrupted, a little out
of countenance, "everything was absurdly unreal. Are you going to be
nice to me, Kathleen?"

"Of course I am, you blessed boy!" she said, taking him in her vigorous
young arms and kissing him squarely and thoroughly. Then she held him at
arms' length and looked him very gravely in the eyes:

"Love her a great deal, Duane," she said in a low voice; "she needs it."

"I could not help doing it."

But Kathleen repeated:

"Love her enough. She will be yours to make--yours to unmake, to mould,
fashion, remould--with God's good help. Love her enough."

"Yes," he said, very soberly.

A slight constraint fell between them; they spoke of the fete, and
Kathleen presently left to superintend details which never worried her,
never disturbed the gay and youthful confidence which had always from
the beginning marked her successful superintendence of the house of
Seagrave.

Geraldine and Scott were very busy playing hostess and host, receiving
new-comers, renewing friendships interrupted by half a summer's
separation; but there was very little to do except to be affable, for
Kathleen's staff of domestics was perfectly adequate--the old servants
of the house of Seagrave, who were quite able by themselves to maintain
the household traditions and whip into line of duty the new and less
conscientious recruits below stairs.

A great many people were gathered on the terrace when Duane descended
the stairs, on his way to inspect his temporary quarters in Miller's
loft, at Hurryon Lodge.

He stopped and spoke to many, greeted Delancy Grandcourt's loquacious
and rotund mother, politely listened to her scandalous budget of gossip,
shook hands cordially with her big, handsome daughter, Catharine, a
strapping