mile
from one of the Argueello heirs, and a few rich men of his time had
followed his example; and slept in their country-houses during six
months of the year while their women yawned the days away, deriving
their principal solace in contemplation of their unchallenged
exclusiveness. Stray members of those old families were left, and were,
if anything, more exclusive than their parents, disdaining the
light-hearted people of Burlingame, unburdened with traditions.
This was still the set that never even powdered, faithful to the
ancient code that it was not respectable, and who spent the greater
part of the year in the country, finding their pleasures in the
climate--soporific--excellent old Chinese or Spanish cooks, and in
reminiscences of the time when the fine estates had not been cut up into
little suburban homesteads for heaven only knew whom.

Mrs. Trennahan had sold her father's place, and bought a superb estate
in the foothills, where she entertained in the simple fashion of the
Eighties. Trennahan still took the haughty spirit of his chosen borough
with all his old humor, but he liked no place so well, even in
California. A New-Yorker is always a New-Yorker, however long he may
live in California, but he becomes more and more attached to the
independent life, the even climate, above all to the cooking; and
Trennahan was no exception. He had found Magdalena the most comfortable
of companions, she had presented him with two fine boys--who were
preparing for college, at present--and a lovely daughter; and he was, in
a leisurely way, collecting earthquake data, for future publication, and
amused himself with a seismograph; which worried Magdalena, who thought
the instrument much too intimate with earthquakes to be a safe piece of
household furniture. Gwynne liked them both as well as any people he had
met in California, and engaged the beautiful Inez--who would seem to
have embodied all her mother's old passionate longing for physical
loveliness--to dance several times with him at the great ball which was
to be the medium of her introduction to society.

"I am still old-fashioned," Mrs. Trennahan confided to Gwynne, with a
sigh. "I never have liked new people and I never shall; Mr. Trennahan
has not laughed it out of me. But what will you? They are seven-eighths
strong in San Francisco, I have a daughter who naturally demands the
rights of her youth--so I make the best of a bad bargain. But I
protest."

When Gwy