It was a gratifying entry that finally was made at the Carters, Uncle Bruce ultimately being pacified and left at home in the care of the English servant, and Mr. Jones, after meeting the guests and hearing the program for the evening, glancing across at Selina in her white net dress and evening cape, and asking to go along.

Papa and Mamma were justly proud of their guests, pre-eminently the older one. And Mr. Roswell Carter was equally and as sincerely gratified to find them his guests. He asked Papa to arrange with Uncle Bruce that he be privileged to have a dinner followed by a smoker at the club that the men of the community be given the opportunity to meet the gentlemen. And Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle coming sailing up in all her splendor to Papa and Mamma and the distinguished strangers, asked to be permitted to arrange for a dinner party on the next evening.

But while these staid elders were doing the honors thus to the guests from the old world over in the more sedate library, Selina was feeling the thrill and the importance of her entrance into the embowered parlors with Mr. Tuttle Jones.

Adele in an even overly-modish dress which sat uneasily upon her, dear Adele with her conscientious face and her serious eyes, stood between her mother and her grandmother, a seeming shrine of palms and floral decorations for background.

Selina deep in her heart was proud of the casual manner with which she came up and presented Mr. Jones. There was no question of his welcome being assured. Mrs. Grosvenor, elaborate as to hair and impressive gown, smiled graciously upon this sought-after young man, and anticipating her daughter, spoke first: "It is very lovely in you to challenge our leniency as you put it, Mr. Jones, and come over with Selina. She is like a second daughter in our house, I may say, she and Adele, my granddaughter, being inseparable. Adele, have you spoken to Mr. Jones?"

Mrs. Carter, also elaborate as to gown and hair, was equally affable: "Charming old Mrs. Jinnie Cumming has given us the pleasure of having her with us this evening. It is inevitable she is going to demand you come and speak to her? Shall I anticipate and take you to her? My duties to arriving guests seem to be about over. Mrs. Cumming claims to have waived formality, too, and has brought a drolly delightful nephew with her, a recent comer in the city."

And Mrs. Carter laid a hand on the arm of Mr. Jones and carried him off, Mrs. Grosvenor turned to bespeak a possible next guest if there be one, and Adele sometimes surprisingly dry-spoken for a girl of eighteen, laid her hand on Selina's gloved arm.

"Unfortunately that's just like Mamma, overlooking the fact he was your escort because she wanted him then herself. And who do you suppose the droll nephew is that Mrs. Jinnie Cumming brought with her? The humor of it's helped me bear up under this ridiculous dress. I must look like an irresponsible in its spangles, don't I, Selina, for I feel like one?"

"It's really a wonderful dress, Adele. Who's the droll nephew?"

"Our Mr. Cannon that Mamma wouldn't let me ask here to the reception to-night. I was perfectly hateful and threw it up to her a bit ago."

Did Adele here look away and her cheek grow pink with rare color? Was she pleased that it should be Mr. Cannon?

With a change of tone she spoke again. "Juliette wouldn't come at the last moment. Selina, she's unhappy, and I think we ought to tell you so. It happened while you were gone." Again with a change of tone: "Did you ever see anything so lovely as Amanthus and so entrancing?"

"Our Mr. Doe thinks so," said Selina. "Witness, please."

Across the hall in the open doorway of the library stood Mr. Cyril Doe, the secretary, endeavoring to fit a glass into his eye with all the awkwardness of one about to lose an arm or a leg or two from sheer inability to hold on to them.

"Did you ever before see a monocle except on the stage, Selina? In 'Lord Dundreary' and that sort of thing? I never have," from Adele. "And the truly wonderful grimaces he's making getting it to stay! It's sort of horribly fascinating to see if he's going to succeed. There, it's done, and what's it in place to gaze on?"

And following the undoubted line of Mr. Doe's vision, as indicated by Selina, Adele came to Amanthus near the embowered newell post, a dozen feet away from the library doorway.

Amanthus! Dimpling for three callow youths surrounding her. Amanthus of the laughing eyes, the laughing cheeks, the laughing lips, Amanthus of the sunny hair and violet gaze, who laughed, as now, as the flowers blow, nor knew why more than they! Amanthus, supple and young and enchanting, in floating clouds of gauzy yellow, a wreath of buds upon her daffodil hair, and slender slippers of daffodil gold upon her buoyant feet! Maud stood near her talking to some other callow youth, handsome enough in her white tarlatan dress with glossy green leaves and their berries in her red-brown hair, and young and vital, too, but not for Mr. Cyril Doe. It was upon that vision known to earth as Amanthus this monocled, British, chinless person was gazing.

"And Mr. Jones, after declining our party, came with you, Selina," from Adele. "We'll be regarding you as another Amanthus."

Selina arched her pretty throat, then remembered to be modest. It was hard not to be complacent about it just a bit, the more so that Mr. Jones having shaken loose from Mrs. Carter, here was seen making his way through the crowded parlors back to her. But at least if she was not so really modest as she could wish about it, she could dissemble.

"Adele, look out in the hall again," thus she sought to put the matter aside. "Mr. Doe has found Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle, and she is taking him to Amanthus."

The next day Maud spoke accusingly to Selina. One rarely deceived Maud. "Don't be self-deceiving about it. Don't be too scathing of Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Grosvenor. Look into your own heart first, if you please, Selina. You were the more elated over taking Mr. Jones than over any of the rest of it, yourself, and you needn't tell me, for one, you weren't! The big frog in the home pool means more to the little frogs than the big fish from strange waters. I suppose I'd have been, too."

The evening of this same day Selina told Culpepper of Maud's accusation. Papa and Mamma, Uncle Bruce and the guests were gone to Mrs. Tuttle's dinner party, and Culpepper on request had come round to spend the evening with her and Auntie. It was a comfort thus to have him in the family, making it possible to ask such things of him, and to talk to him about quite personal matters. He and she were in the parlor before the flickering fire and the burnished brasses, and Auntie in the next room was playing her evening game of Napoleon solitaire on the dining-table.

"Maud didn't quite say I was an incipient snob, Culpepper," Selina commented after telling him the story of the whole evening, the rescue of Uncle Bruce by Mr. Jones included. "She didn't actually say I was as despicable as that, but she implied it." Selina flushed and grew even a little more thoughtful. "And the truth of it is, Culpepper, I had to admit to Maud her accusation in a sense is true. I was elated over taking Mr. Jones. But Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Grosvenor could not have been made to acknowledge on any less worldly grounds the something I had come to recognize as necessary to my Wistar self-respect, and especially if I were to continue going with Adele. I've been thinking it over and I'm right about this. But there's worse! I flaunted my new evening cape and was complacent over it. I even felt myself pitying Mamma and feeling cross toward her about her old scarf. Whereas if I come down to facts, Cousin Anna's money which I still owe her, went to replace that used to buy the cape and some other things. It isn't the actual cape I'm meaning, though, nor the literal episode of taking Mr. Jones to the Carter's, Culpepper? Of course you know that? What I'm worrying over is what Maud calls 'the principle back of the thing.' I'm not one bit pleased with what I see in myself that way. Do we go on forever climbing three feet out of the well by day, and falling back two feet by night? Will I ever get anywhere?"

The iliad of her little woes, piteously assailing those walls of half-knowledge shutting her out from her mede of common-sense and common understanding! The odyssey of her little wanderings following half-truths, misled by platitudes, failing ever of the haven of truth where she would be! Alas for you, Mamma and Auntie, who with all your yearnings over her, have so pitifully equipped your one ewe lamb for life!

Culpepper the while Selina talked, thus guileless of her guilelessness, thus innocent of her innocence, had been gazing at her across the space of the hearth between them, his eyes upon her, but following thoughts of his own. He came to himself with a start.

Now that she, this pretty girl here before the fire with him in this intimate aloofness, was growing up, tall and fair, that crown of pale, shining hair distinguishing her, it came upon him at times such as now, with a clutch, a catching of his breath, to have her still so ingenuously sweet, still so honest, still so utterly and so endearingly confiding. It disarmed him. It broke down his control. It got into that blatant blood of his and for moments made him see red and feel afraid for himself. He wanted to seize her hands there in her lap, and kiss their helpless palms! No, he wanted to seize her and kiss her, kiss her until she awoke to the facts of life and—understood. And this achieved, lay down the mandate to her that he was here, and all the while had been here, for the man-made and Heaven-sanctioned purpose of taking material and every other sort of care of her, the woman. His stepmother knew it, his Cousin Robert knew it, ole Miss, he'd take his oath, more than half suspected it.

True, he had nothing whatever of his own, only a princely allowance from that big-souled person, his stepmother. But God Almighty, what of that? He'd have all that he needed having in his own good time. He was the stripe and make that batters any old thing out of the way of the going if it be mistaken enough to get there—the sort, in fact, that succeeds. The baffling thing here was of a different nature, being Selina herself. You can't crush a bud into its bloom by the mere force of your longing; you can't kiss a child that knows no passion, with passion!

Culpepper, twenty-three himself, but no less sophisticated than he would be when he was thirty-three, pulled himself together, big, good-looking young giant that he was, the effect of whose bodily presence here was always to further dwarf the shabby little parlor.

The soft flip of Auntie's cards being dealt out on the table came from the next room. It was like a restoring touch from her calm personality.

"One thing is cleared up for me by last night's happenings," declared Culpepper cheerfully.

"What?" from Selina. She had been thinking how comfy and nice it was, this long chatty evening with him, and the firelight, and the always restful sense of Auntie's proximity.

"Why, Tuttle, or Tuts, as we of his class at college called him, was in training for a color-sense those four years, matching suits to socks, and socks to neckties. But for that nicety for color so faithfully attained, where would little Mr. Bruce be right now?"

Auntie's voice came in from the next room. "Mr. Jones is a gentleman, and has proved it, Culpepper. I won't have you decrying him."

"All right, ole Miss; what you say goes. What we at college kicked about was that he was such a lady."

"Culpepper, not another word," from Auntie.

"Just to ask how much longer the high and mighties, these Britishers, are with us," pleaded Culpepper, "so I'll know when it's safe for me to show up around here in the old way?"

"One more day only," Selina reassured him, "Mr. Carter's giving them a dinner and smoker at the club to-morrow evening. Mrs. Harrison has arranged for them to stop for a day at Selimcroft, her Uncle's stock-farm up your way, as they go. She discovered that they want to see some of our typical horses and stables and training tracks and such, you'll know just what, better than I do. Mrs. Harrison and Amanthus are going up for the day with them. Amanthus is so impressed by Mr. Doe, the secretary, she's overcome. It hasn't often happened to Amanthus. He told her for some reason or other, that everything that's good form in England just now wears bangs. And she asked him, you know how Amanthus does ask such things, if he meant horses?"