to go out and
take notes on the new aspect the world must henceforth present to her.

He looked at her with an approval that gradually merged into a sense of
comfort. She had chosen the simplest dress and hat in her wardrobe, as
significant of a chastened soul; but simplicity more than anything else
emphasized her distinction. "She'll be all right," he said, consolingly,
to himself. "Whatever happens she's the kind to come out on top. Rupert
Ashley would be a fool to throw over a superb, high-spirited creature
like that. He'll not do it. Of that I feel sure."

The conviction helped him to settle more luxuriously into the depths of
his couch and to relish the flavor of his cigar. He was quite sincere in
the feeling that if she were but safe he should be more or less
indifferent to the deluge overwhelming himself.

"Papa," she ventured at last, watching carefully the action of the
little silver button-hook, as she buttoned her gloves, "if that Mr.
Davenant came while I'm gone, you wouldn't change your mind, would you?"

"I don't think he's in the least likely to turn up."

"But if he did?"

"Well, I suppose you'll be back before long. We couldn't settle anything
without talking it over, in any case."

Forced to be content with that, she kissed him and turned away.

[Illustration: SHE FOUND COMFORT IN GETTING INTO THE OPEN AIR]

She found a comfort in getting into the open air, into the friendly
streets, under the shade of the familiar trees, that surprised her. The
absence of pose characteristic of the average American town struck her
for the first time as soothing. With none of the effort to make life
conform to a rigid standard of propriety, which in an English community
would be the first thing to notice, there was an implied invitation to
the spirit to relax. In the slap-dash, go-as-you-please methods of
building, paving, and cleaning she saw a tacit assumption that,
perfection being not of this world, one is permitted to rub along
without it. Rodney Lane, which in Colonial days had led to Governor
Rodney's "Mansion," had long ago been baptized Algonquin Avenue by civic
authorities with a love of the sonorous, but it still retained the
characteristics of a New England village street. Elms arched over it
with the regularity of a Gothic vaulting, and it straggled at its will.
Its houses, set in open lawns, illustrated all the phases of the
national taste in architecture as manifested throughout the nineteenth