Allison herself--very gifted musically." The fragments
came back to him as his aunt preceded him with her small, hesitating
steps up the narrow path. The picture of an old lady playing the "Songs
without Words" passed through Mark's mind, and he began to plan flight.
"But she was obliged to give up her music to care for her invalid
father."

"I heard Stella playing," Mark commented.

His aunt rejoined after a moment:

"She doesn't seem at all nervous. Young people aren't in these days. At
her age, if any one asked me to play, I was terrified."

Her nephew smiled down at her, hooking her with an affectionate arm.

"What used you to play, _Tante_? The 'Blue Alsatian Mountains' and the
'Stephanie Gavotte'?"

Her faded smile held a faint surprise.

"How did you know?"

"I am a clairvoyant, and did you sing, 'Then You'll Remember Me?'"

"No, I never sang; but Mary--your mother--did."

They reached the back porch and passed through the wide hall into
the shaded spaciousness of the drawing-room. In that quiet interior
light that rested softly upon the decorous portraits of his forebears,
the mahogany, and the accumulated bric-a-brac of three generations,
he became aware of the incongruous presence of Stella. He realized
again her clean-cut, finished daintiness, the incisiveness of voice
and feature. As he released her hand, still aware of its hard, boyish
grip, he heard his aunt's voice, light, wandering, non-arresting, as if
continuing some conversational thread, "And Miss Allison Clyde, Mark--my
old friend." He had been vaguely aware of some one else in the room, but
when he met the smile of the older woman who held out her hand to him,
he wondered that he had not realized it more promptly; for Miss Allison
Clyde, although far removed from the youth of years, had about her
something immediately and quietly charming--something, it occurred to
him, that suggested autumnal perfumes and the warmth of late sunlight.
It was a face with a certain fine austerity belonging to a generation
at once more natural and more reserved than ours.

"So this is Mary's boy," she said. "You have her eyes." He looked at her
and unconsciously glanced at Stella. The older woman belonged to the
quiet old room. Stella, despite the same inheritance, did not.

Tea was brought in by a maid grown gray in his aunt's service, and Miss
Lucretia presided. Mark's eyes again wandered from Miss Allison Clyde to
Stella with involuntary comparison.