“Good morning, Uncle Brooke. I have brought my friend, Marjorie Dean to meet you. I hope you are feeling your splendid best today.”

Miss Susanna’s voice, gently modulated until nothing remained of its natural quick, brisk quality, filled Marjorie with an impulse to cry. It was not that gentle voice alone which awoke her emotion. She was looking straight toward a face, strong, proud, with an almost haughty set of noble dark head on broad but sloping shoulders. Eyes, startling in their blueness, a firm mouth, somehow suggesting humor and shaded by a close-clipped dark mustache.

Marjorie had seen portraits of Brooke Hamilton. She had never before seen this particular painting of him. She understood, instantly she beheld it, why Miss Susanna should take pleasure in regarding it as life-like enough to merit an introduction. It had been evidently painted when he was perhaps thirty and in the glory of his manhood. It was a life-size study of head and shoulders far finer than any other of him she had previously seen at the Arms.

A choking sensation rose in her throat. She fought it back, clenching her hands and resisting sturdily the impulse to cry. It seemed an age since Miss Susanna had spoken. In reality it was not more than two minutes.

“Uncle Brooke, let me introduce Marjorie Dean. You wrote the fourteenth maxim for her, though you did not then know it. Marjorie Dean, let me present you to my great uncle, Brooke Hamilton. He wishes to give you his confidence.” Again Miss Susanna’s voice rose and fell gently on the sunlit study.

“Good morning, my friend, Brooke Hamilton. I accept your confidence as sacred. I will never disturb the inner deeps.” Marjorie gazed at the handsome manly face through a mist.

“Because I have called you friend I will neither measure out friendship to you in quantity nor lay a restriction upon it.” It was Miss Susanna who followed Marjorie’s exalted promise with Brooke Hamilton’s own creed of friendship.

“I thank you, Mr. Brooke Hamilton.” Marjorie bowed sedately. Next instant her sedate air broke up in a winsome smile. She thought the man in the portrait looked as though he might have enjoyed fun and laughter as well as profound consciousness of responsibility.

“And now you’ve been introduced,” Miss Susanna said naively. “I had Jonas put this portrait away for awhile. It used to hang in my private sitting room. I was afraid you might see it before I was ready to have you. It was painted by a young Frenchman named Blaneau. He died at twenty-seven. He would have no doubt been ranked as the greatest portrait painter of his time had he lived. Such is the history of the most natural picture of my uncle I have. He claimed it to be such. If you like it, it is to stay here and be your inspiration. Truly, I think the presence of it in the room will help you.”

“I know it will.” Marjorie said fervently. “Oh, Miss Susanna, do you think I am great enough of spirit to do him justice?”

“I know you are.” Miss Hamilton’s tone was victoriously certain. “Would you be amazed if I were to say that you are like him in some respects? You are. Your ideals are in keeping with his. He believed most of all in the romance of deeds, rather than of love. He gloried in action; the kind that would most benefit the most people. Yet he found after all that love was love, that the romance of men and women—”

Miss Susanna stopped. Came a tense hush. The idea of Brooke Hamilton as in love had never before presented itself to Marjorie. “The romance of men and women” repeated itself in Marjorie’s brain. There it was again. It was not for her. She would write the biography of Brooke Hamilton, promote the interests of the dormitory. She would continue to hug the romance of deeds to her heart.

She did not know that romance was still waiting patiently for her around a future corner.

She did not know that beauty and romance hate separation; that true love seeks true natures. She had yet to earn that true romance was the inner heart of love. Her bold sister, adventure, belonged to deeds. How she learned the lesson of love from one who had learned it too late for happiness will be told in “Marjorie Dean’s Romance.”