nner," she
thought, for Corinna had a royal soul.

CHAPTER XXI

DANCE MUSIC

At breakfast the next morning, Mrs. Culpeper observed, with maternal
solicitude, that Stephen was looking more cheerful. While she poured his
coffee, with one eye on the fine old coffee pot and one on the animated
face of her son, she reflected that he appeared to have come at last to
his senses. "If he would only stop all this folly and settle down," she
thought. "Surely it is quite time now for him to become normal again."
As she looked at him her expression softened, in spite of her general
attitude of disapprobation, and the sharp brightness of her eyes gave
place to humid tenderness. Of all her children he had long been her
favourite, for the reason, perhaps, that he was the only one who had
ever caused her any anxiety; and though she would have gone to the stake
cheerfully for all and each of them, there would have been a keener edge
to the martyrdom she suffered in Stephen's behalf.

"Be sure and make a good breakfast, Mr. Culpeper," she urged, glancing
down the table to where her husband was dividing his attention between
the morning paper and his oatmeal. "My poor father used to say that if
he didn't make a good breakfast he felt it all day long."

"He was right, my dear. I have no doubt that he was right," replied Mr.
Culpeper, in the tone of solemn sentiment which he reserved for
deceased parents. Though he was dyspeptic by constitution, and inclined
to gout and other bodily infirmities, he applied himself philosophically
to a heavy breakfast such as his wife's father had enjoyed.

"Stephen is looking so well this morning," remarked Mrs. Culpeper in a
sprightly voice. "He has quite a colour."

Mr. Culpeper rolled his large brown eyes, as handsome and as opaque as
chestnuts, in the direction of his son. Though he would never have
observed the improvement unless his wife had called his attention to it,
his kind heart was honestly relieved to discover that Stephen looked
better. He had worried a good deal in his sluggish way over what he
thought of as "the effect of the war" on his son. With the strong
paternal instinct which beheld every child as a branch on a genealogical
tree, he had been as much disturbed as his wife by the gossip which had
reached him about the daughter of Gideon Vetch.

"Feeling all right, my boy?" he inquired now, in the tone of indulgent
anxiety which, from the first day of his return, had exasp