sed the room to the glowing fire and the black marble
mantelpiece, which had supplanted the delicate Adam one of a less
resplendent period, he wore an air that was at once gentle and
haughty--the expression of a man who hopes that he is a Christian and
knows that his blood is blue.

"Hasn't Stephen come in yet?" he inquired of his wife. "I thought I
heard him upstairs."

She shook her head helplessly. "No, and I told him Margaret was coming.
That is her ring now."

Mr. Culpeper looked at Mary Byrd. "I am sure that Margaret would clothe
herself more discreetly," he remarked in a voice which sounded husky
because he tried to make it facetious. "When I was a young man it was
the fashion to compare women to flowers, and in these unromantic days I
should call Margaret our last violet--"

A peal of laughter fell from the bright red lips of Mary Byrd. "It
sounds as depressing as the last rose of summer," she cried, "and it's
just as certain to be left on the stem--" Then she broke off, still
pulsing with merriment, for the door opened slowly, and the last violet
entered the room.

CHAPTER V

MARGARET

As he inserted his latch-key in the old-fashioned lock, Stephen
remembered that his mother had instructed him not to be late because
Margaret Blair was coming to spend the evening. "It takes you so long to
change that I believe you begin to dream as soon as you go to your
room," she had added; and while he made his way hurriedly and softly up
the stairs, he wondered how he could have so completely forgotten the
girl whom he had always thought of vaguely as the one who would some
day--some remote day probably--become his wife. He was not in love with
Margaret, and he believed, though one could never be sure, that she was
not in love with him--that her fancy, if a preference so modest could be
called by so capricious a name, was for the handsome young clergyman who
read Browning with her every Tuesday afternoon. But he was aware also
that she would marry him if he asked her; he knew that the hearts of
four formidable parents were set on the match; and in his past
experience his mother's heart had invariably triumphed over his less
intrepid resolves. When Janet had said that the war had "spoiled" this
carefully nurtured sentiment, she had described the failure with her
usual accuracy. If he had never gone to France, he would certainly have
married Margaret in his twenty-fourth year, and by this time they would
have