ound cocksure, high and mighty as if he'd just been made
K.C.B., and there's no getting any steady work out of him. You should
have seen Tave's face when he was telling me!"

His mother laughed. "I can imagine it; he's worried over this new move
of Almeda's. I confess it puzzles me."

"Well, I'm off to see some of the fun--and the girl. Tave said he didn't
expect Aunt Meda before to-morrow night, and it's a good time for me to
rubber round the old place a little on my own hook;--and, mother,"--he
stooped to her; Aurora Googe raised her still beautiful eyes to the
frank if somewhat hard blue ones that looked down into hers; a fine
color mounted into her cheeks,--"take the priest for his meals, for all
me. It's an invasion, but, of course, I recognize that we're responsible
for it on account of the quarry business. I suppose we shall have to
make some concessions to all classes till we get away from here for good
and all--then we'll have our fling, won't we, mother?"

He was off without waiting for a reply. Aurora Googe watched him out of
sight, then turned to her work, the flush still upon her cheeks.

V

Champney leaned on the gate of the paddock at Champ-au-Haut and looked
about him. The estate at The Bow had been familiar to him throughout his
childhood and boyhood. He had been over every foot of it, and at all
seasons, with his Uncle Louis. He was realizing that it had never seemed
more beautiful to him than now, seen in the warm light of a July sunset.
In the garden pleasance, that sloped to the lake, the roses and lilies
planted there a generation ago still bloomed and flourished, and in the
elm-shaded paddock, on the gate of which he was leaning, filly and foal
could trace their pedigree to the sixth and seventh generation of
deep-chested, clean-flanked ancestors.

The young man comprehended in part only, the reason of his mother's
extreme bitterness towards Almeda Champney. His uncle had loved him; had
kept him with him much of the time, encouraging him in his boyish aims
and ambitions which his mother fostered--and Louis Champney was
childless, the last in direct descent of a long line of fine
ancestors--.

Here his thought was checked; those ancestors were his, only in a
generation far removed; the Champney blood was in his mother's veins.
But his father was Almeda Champney's only brother--why then, should not
his mother count on the estate being his in the end? He knew this to
have been her hope, alt