t 9 A.M. Bar. 30. Weather clear. Charles left for
Washington, summons from President, in the midst of it. Agatha and Victor
again look at the Farrar property. Hugh has a ducking. P.S. At dinner
night Bessie announces her engagement to Cecil Grainger. Present Sarah
and George Grenfell, Agatha and Victor Strange, Gerald Shorter, Lord
Kylie--"

Honora looked up. Hugh was at her shoulder, with his eyes on the page.

"Psalter's Falls!" he exclaimed. "How well I remember that day! I was
just home from my junior year at Harvard."

"Who was 'Charles'?" inquired Honora.

"Senator Pendleton--Bessie's father. Just after I jumped into the
mill-pond the telegram came for him to go to Washington, and I drove him
home in my wet clothes. The old man had a terrible tongue, a whip-lash
kind of humour, and he scored me for being a fool. But he rather liked
me, on the whole. He told me if I'd only straighten out I could be
anything, in reason."

"What made you jump in the mill-pond?" Honora asked, laughing.

"Bessie Grainger. She had a devil in her, too, in those days, but she
always kept her head, and I didn't." He smiled. "I'm willing to admit
that I was madly in love with her, and she treated me outrageously. We
were standing on the bridge--I remember it as though it were yesterday
--and the water was about eight feet deep, with a clear sand bottom. She
took off a gold bracelet and bet me I wouldn't get it if she threw it in.
That night, right in the middle of dinner, when there was a pause in the
conversation, she told us she was engaged to Cecil Grainger. It turned
out, by the way, to have been his bracelet I rescued. I could have wrung
his neck, and I didn't speak to her for a month."

Honora repressed an impulse to comment on this incident. With his arm
over her shoulder, he turned the pages idly, and the long lists of guests
which bore witness to the former life and importance of Highlawns passed
before her eyes. Distinguished foreigners, peers of England, churchmen,
and men renowned in literature: famous American statesmen, scientists,
and names that represented more than one generation of wealth and
achievement--all were here. There were his school and college friends,
five and six at a time, and besides them those of young girls who were
now women, some of whom Honora had met and known in New York or Newport.

Presently he closed the book abruptly and returned it to the safe. To her
sharpened senses, the very act itself