If Gwynne Peters had supposed at the outset that the new tenants would remain long unacquainted with their set of erratic landlords, the "quite a few gentlemen and some ladies" whom he had tactfully refrained from mentioning, he would have been profoundly mistaken; but in fact he supposed nothing of the sort. He knew his kin too well; and perhaps shared tacitly Templeton's openly-expressed and most devout hope that none of them would say or do anything to put the Pallinders out of the notion of buying the property when the lease should expire. "They'll want thirty-five or forty thousand, if not more, I'll bet a doughnut," the agent would say in moments of gloomy confidence; "and you know, Mr. Peters, the place ain't worth—at least it can't be sold for—a dollar over twenty-eight, the way times are. I might screw the colonel up to twenty-nine-fifty—he seems to be a free spender, and the ladies like the house so much, he'd do anything they want. But, like as not, just as I've done that and got everything good and going, Mr. Steven Gwynne will come in with some objection and knock the whole deal higher than Gilderoy's kite. And when I think of what it will be to get 'em all combed down and willing to sign—and those children of Lucien Gwynne's out in Iowa, you know, they've got to quiet the title—and Mrs. Montgomery over in Chillicothe, she's another—well, I suppose there's no use crossing that bridge till we've come to it, but I tell you sometimes it keeps me awake nights worrying." The family had fallen into the habit of leaving all the business connected with THE GWYNNE ESTATE—it must be written thus to furnish some idea of the proportions it assumed in their minds—to Gwynne's management. He had just been elevated to the bar; from thence to the bench, and to whatever corresponds to the woolsack in our judicial system was, according to them, a short step for a Gwynne. The mantle of his grandfather had fallen upon his shoulders; they were proud of him in their extraordinary fashion, which combined hysterical and wholly unmerited praise with equally hysterical and undeserved blame. For a while even Gwynne, who had a tolerable sense of humour, took himself with amazing seriousness. He sat in his office surrounded by that copious library of the old gentleman's, now grown somewhat out of date, to be sure, but still impressive by sheer weight and numbers; there was a photographed copy of the Governor's portrait, inkstand and all, over his desk, and a massive safe in one corner. It contained at this time, as Gwynne long years afterward acknowledged to me, with laughter, nothing but some of the old family silver, forks, trays, ladles, and what-not blackened with age and neglect sacked up in flannel wherein the moth made great havoc. "Sam's share, you know," said Gwynne, his face clouding a little, when his laugh was out. "I had to take care of it, of course."

Into this august retreat came daily one or another of the young fellow's connection with inquiries about that property which everyone of them called in all honesty and simplicity "my house"; and, after much futile advice, took their leave, commenting on the fact that he strongly resembled his grandfather, and adjuring him to "remember that he was a Gwynne." There were so many of them they gave the place a false air of bustle and business, to which Gwynne used, half in fun, to attribute his later success—"looked as if I was all balled up with work, you know, 'rising young lawyer,' and all the rest of it." But, indeed, I am afraid there were not many affairs of importance going forward among the calf-bound volumes, and Gwynne defaced more than one sheet of legal cap., with gross caricatures and idle verses. If the family took an interest in the fortunes of the house before, it was redoubled now. To have the place rented at all was a novelty; but to have it rented to personages of such opulence and distinction as the Pallinders satisfied the most exact standards; and the colonel's somewhat vague allusions to his design of ultimately buying it filled these sanguine souls with delight. Let me do them justice: they would one and all have indignantly refused thousands from people whom they deemed unworthy. Have we not seen them rejecting poor Silberberg's offer with contumely? But Colonel Pallinder with his Virginia accent and his large manner recalled a generation contemporary with Governor Gwynne himself, and the traditions of an antique and formal gentility. The Pallinders were the only people so far who had succeeded in residing in, and dispensing the hospitalities of the old Gwynne house without offence to its owners; I think the Gwynnes took a kind of vicarious pride in the spectacle. One after another, the entire family called upon them, appraised them, patronised them. They drank the colonel's fine sherry: they covertly eyed Mrs. Pallinder's suave beauty, and Mazie's bewildering toilettes; they were at first repelled and then overpowered by the rich tasteful changes in the ancient rooms; the peacock-blue plush and old-gold satin in the south parlour; the crimson wall-paper embossed with gilt figures the size of a cabbage in the dining-room; the grand piano in the north parlour and piano-lamp glorious with onyx slabs and pendant glass icicles of prisms—the Gwynnes saw all these things with an Indian stolidity in the presence of their tenants, but they came away pleased to the core. They went down to Gwynne's office—yes, even Mrs. Horace Gwynne went!—and both figuratively and literally patted him on the back. They were actually civil to Templeton! Old Steven Gwynne, who had been violently alarmed at first, supposing that these improvements and furnishings must be paid for by himself and the rest of the heirs, magically recovered his tranquillity so soon as he heard that Colonel Pallinder was doing it all out of his own pocket; he pronounced the wall-paper and new graining to be in the best of taste, although hardly the equal in appearance or cost of what Governor Gwynne would have provided. Such was the Gwynne enthusiasm that I am convinced it must have contributed largely to the success of the Pallinders with our society; for, after all, as unstable as they themselves were, the Gwynne position with us was of the most stable; our city had known them for fifty years. A family whose men were rigorously confined to the professions—all except Horace Gwynne, who was in the wholesale grocery business,—a family which numbered among its members a governor of a State—even if it also numbered one or more "queer" people—such a family held, unquestioned, the highest social rank. And Mrs. Horace Gwynne—she was a daughter of old Bishop Hunter, which may be supposed in a measure to set off the grocery business—frankly considered herself arbiter not only of her husband's family, but of society in general as well; and never doubted that in the matter of assigning people to their caste and station one blast upon her bugle-horn was worth a thousand men.

She performed her first visit in state and ceremony in her well-ordered barouche—the Horace Gwynnes were fairly well-to-do, owing, people said, to Mrs. Horace's implacable thrift—and eying the approaches to the old house, as she drove up in a highly critical and examining mood. Her sharp glance noted every change; the carefully-weeded sweep and circle of the drive, the close-cut lawn and pruned shrubbery pleased her like an incense to the Governor's memory. The place had not looked so since his day. There was a length of red carpet down over the flagged veranda and stone steps such as used to adorn the sacred threshold thirty years before when she was a young bride just entered into the family; this trivial thing moved her inexplicably as such things do, and she descended at the door in a temper of less severity. It augured well for the pair of ladies within, profanely peering through their exceedingly high-priced lace curtains and wondering who on earth the funny little old lady in the chignon and her best black silk was.

Mazie, as soon as her acquaintance became more extended and intimate, entertained us with a picturesque and I have no doubt entirely accurate account of this and other Gwynne visits. If they amused her she was by far too sharp to let it be seen; not thus do people attain popularity. Mazie knew when, and in what company, and of what sort of things to make fun; no gift can be more valuable to the social aspirant. No, Miss Pallinder, curled up on her flowered-cretonne sofa, nibbling caramels, and telling us about the Gwynnes, might have posed for the model of the ingÉnue, girlish, inexperienced, and youthfully gay. "We didn't know there was such a large family of Gwynnes," she explained. "Are any of you related to them? No? They're perfectly lovely people, aren't they? They've all called on us, and you know I think that's so kind when we came here such strangers; we were awfully lonesome for a while. If it hadn't been for Doctor Vardaman, I don't know what we'd have done. Isn't he the dearest old gentleman? Mamma fairly fell in love with him at first sight; we have him up to dinner all the time, now. You know it's such a terrible job for him to get a good servant—I'm sure I can't see why. I told him he could hire me any day. I suppose it's because it's a little lonely, and his house must be so quiet. We don't have any trouble, but then we have such a gang of them they keep each other company. But you know we were so surprised after people began to call on us to find out there were so many Gwynnes! Mr. Peters had said something about them—I think he's lovely, don't you? but we hadn't any idea there was such a big connection; the house belongs to all of them—did you know that? At least they all call it their house. Such a dear old lady came—well, maybe not so very old, but dressed in rather an old-fashioned way—Mrs. Horace Gwynne, of course you all know her. She was just sweet, and took such an interest. She told mamma the piano ought to be on the other side of the room, because there was so much better light by that window, and that was where it always was when Governor Gwynne lived here. And she wanted to know if we had noticed that those big cut-glass chandeliers in the centre of the ceilings downstairs were an exact copy, only smaller, of the one in the State-House—that was being built at the same time as this house, and the Governor had the copies made, he admired the design so much. Isn't that interesting? And then mamma had one of the servants bring some hot coffee and little cakes, the way we always do, you know, and Mrs. Gwynne told us about some kind of cookies she has made that are the best she ever ate, so mamma asked her for the recipe right off—mamma can't cook a bit, and don't go in the kitchen once a month, but she's ever so much interested just the same. And when Mrs. Gwynne went away she said she'd had a lovely time—wasn't it nice of her? and was going to have all her family call on us—wasn't that kind? And she sent us a card to her reception; and right the very next afternoon Mrs. Lawrence called—she's another Gwynne, isn't she?—and asked us to Marian's coming-out party, so sweet. And, oh, girls, two such dear funny little old mai—I mean elderly, and they aren't married, you know—Miss Gwynne and Miss Mollie Gwynne came—what are you all laughing at, what's the joke? Well, I think you're real mean not to tell me! I thought they were nice—well, of course, maybe they did seem kind of queer, but—well, it was a little funny," said Mazie, yielding to the laughter with apparent reluctance; "we took them all over the house, because we thought, you know, they'd be pleased to see the way we'd fixed it up. And they did seem rather tickled; Miss Gwynne said she thought they had never had any tenants in their house before that appreciated it as we did. And when we got to the south parlour Miss Mollie wouldn't go in, and Miss Gwynne took us in and said in an awful whisper that everybody in the family had been laid out in that room, but she'd try to get Miss Mollie in to look at the chandelier which was an exact copy of the one in the State-House—and Mollie hadn't been in the house for so long, maybe it would refresh her, and take her mind off the funerals, you know. So Mollie came in," went on Mazie, who by this time was openly laughing like everyone else, "and she took one look and covered her eyes like this, and said 'Oh, Sister Eleanor, I can't—I can't,' and Sister Eleanor said, 'Look up, Mollie, look up'—just as if it was Heaven, you know—'don't you remember the chandelier?' And then Miss Mollie said, 'Oh, yes, I remember—shall I ever forget—boo-hoo!—it cost three hundred and twenty-five dollars—boo-hoo!—every one of 'em cost three hundred and twenty-five dollars!' But, honestly, girls, it's all very well to laugh, but it gives me the creeps to think of that room since I've known; I can't go into it without seeing a coffin spread out right where our centre-table is; and you know there's that lovely bisque monkey climbing up a cord that mamma has hanging from the chandelier—think of that dangling down over a—B-r-r! I didn't know about so many Gwynnes dying here. There's enough left to keep the family going anyway, I should think. Was Mr. Peters' brother one of 'em that died in the house? Eh? What! Mercy! isn't that awful? Why, I thought somebody said Sam Peters was in Honduras or Alaska or somewhere—is it the same one? Isn't that awful! Isn't it safe to have him—— Horrors! Oh, girls, I think that's awful! And Mr. Peters is such a dear, isn't he? So nice! But don't you tell him I said that—now please don't, girls, I'd be ready to fall down dead I'd be so ashamed if he knew I said he was a dear. I'd never look him in the face again," said the ingenuous Mazie, knowing perfectly well—who better?—that Gwynne would be miraculously informed of this damaging admission before the next twenty-four hours were over.

The Pallinders were not quit of their landlords, for a few episodes such as those Mazie described; but, as it happens, I never heard her tell of Steven Gwynne's visit; and only learned the details afterwards in a roundabout way from Doctor Vardaman and Gwynne, both of whom were witnesses of that momentous event. Steven was about the age of Doctor Vardaman and looked twenty years older; they had been boys together. When Steven came in town—he lived in a weird little tumble-down cottage with a ragged little farm to match it, several miles out in the country—he always went to see the doctor, whom he called Jack, and of whom he grew touchingly and somewhat embarrassingly fond towards the last of his life. I remember him a tremulous old man with wild grey hair and beard in clothing worse than shabby, and coarse boots, walking with the aid of a ferocious-looking cane, a forlorn and fantastic and rather alarming figure; yet he was really nothing to be afraid of, although I suppose he was just not quite crazy. When you came to know about him, poor old Steven filled one with pity and that strange baseless remorse with which the view of weakness or suffering sometimes afflicts us. The gifts are so unjustly portioned out; simple flesh-and-blood rebels at the shame of it. These are whole, prosperous and victorious; these maimed, mad, dull, helpless, or hopeless—and who is to blame? It is none of our fault; none the less, the sight galls us to the quick; and there are moments when the spectacle of a string of navvies moiling soddenly in a ditch seems an outrage on humanity. Something of this used to go through Doctor Vardaman's mind as he sat in his library listening patiently and most humanely to his old-time playfellow's endless rambling talk. Steven was a profuse talker; he picked up crumbs of misinformation with a kind of squirrel-like diligence; all his life he had been beginning something—law, medicine, divinity, what had he not tried? He never learned anything; he could hardly spell; he used to declaim heatedly against the tyranny of schools, and had a great taste for phrases such as "Nature's gentlemen." Even our tolerant society could not stand Steven Gwynne; it was said that he was not stupid, and not much queerer, after all, than some of the other Gwynnes, but—nobody could stand Steven Gwynne. When he had nearly run through his patrimony, the Governor, who was his cousin, took him in hand, regulated his affairs, and exiled him to that little farm I have mentioned. Steven was upwards of thirty at this time, but he obeyed the family great man peaceably enough; and there he had lived ever since; indulging—theoretically only, by good luck—in extraordinary beliefs about State Rights—during the Civil War—about Science and Religion, about Property, about Marriage, about everything and anything under the sun, harmless, distressing, and annoying. Young Gwynne had inherited him along with the other responsibilities of the GWYNNE ESTATE; and when, rumours of the new tenants having reached him, the old gentleman appeared in the office, Gwynne must take him to call upon them. "I would not wish to be lacking in etiquette," said Steven elaborately. "And I'm told that Colonel Pallinder's family belong to our circle. It is the duty of every one of the owners, and I trust that it won't be forgotten that I am one of the heirs to the Gwynne estate," he added, eying the reluctant young man with some harshness, for Steven was tenacious of his rights: "to—to hold out the right hand of fellowship to—to the stranger within our gates."

"You never did before," Gwynne objected. "We've had two or three tenants that you've never even seen. I don't really think it makes the least difference——"

"I've never had this kind of tenants before," said Steven—which, indeed, was an unanswerable argument. "Why, they've been there six months! You don't understand about these social matters, Gwynne. It's diplomacy. They're in Governor Gwynne's house, and it's natural they should expect the Gwynne family to recognise them. Why, they might take offence and leave! Besides, it's the part of kindness for us to introduce them around, it—it gives 'em a place at once. People say: 'There's So-and-so, he's a friend of the Gwynnes.' That—that settles it, don't you see? Why, now, to give you an example: Jake Bennett was at my house the other day, and I told him I'd pay him as soon as the rent from my property came in. He says: 'That's all right, Mr. Gwynne, I know I can trust you. A Gwynne's word's as good as his bond,' he says. That just shows. 'A Gwynne's word's as good as his bond,' he says. 'I know you, Mr. Gwynne; you're Governor Gwynne's cousin, and that's good enough for me, or anybody——'"

"Who's Jake Bennett?" asked Gwynne abruptly.

"Why, he's a man I buy a load of manure from once in a while. He's a little queer in the upper story, you know," said old Steven, tapping his own forehead with a wise nod. "But the poor fellow's heart's in the right place. 'A Gwynne's word's as good as his bond,' he says——"

"You oughtn't to be owing that man, Cousin Steven," interrupted Gwynne. He turned to his desk. "Here, this is the nineteenth, but I'll give you yours now, and then you can pay him when you get home. Now, you sign a receipt for this seven-fifty, and I'll tell Templeton I advanced it, so he can hold it out of yours next month. Now you're getting your December money in November, see? There won't be anything coming to you from the house the first of December, understand? Seven dollars and a half—sign here. And you pay that manure-fellow as soon as you get home, will you?"

Steven would, he said. He folded the money together and crammed it into his tattered old pocket-book; he handled it a little eagerly, never having had much to handle. "We'd better start out to see them, the Pallinders, you know—right away, hadn't we?" he said, glancing at the clock.

Gwynne looked at him with a sinking heart. Of course he was not ashamed of his kin. What! Ashamed of Cousin Steven! Gwynne would have knocked down the man who hinted it. Nevertheless, it must be allowed that Cousin Steven was more lax in matters relating to his personal appearance even than became one of Nature's gentlemen. He did not shave; he chewed tobacco; his boots manifested some acquaintance with Jake Bennett's unpaid-for wares. We all know that these things really do not count; a man's a man for a' that. It would be a shoddy soul that would condemn him for not blacking his boots, or cavil at the fashion of his coat. Still, we are conscious of a curious confusion within us on the point; we muddle the clear stainless water of our theories with the cloudy dye of our conventions; and to most of us, the quality of gentleman seems somehow inextricably associated with clean linen. Gwynne was no snob, but——

"Suppose we stop in to see Doctor Vardaman first and ask him to lend you a collar and tie—you know that kind of high black stock he wears?" he suggested weakly. "And then you—you might wash your hands, you know, and, and—clean your nails. I should think your hands would be cold this weather, Cousin Steven; don't you want to buy a pair of gloves?"

"Gloves?" said Steven contemptuously. "You're too delicate, Gwynne. You've got all effeminated, living the way you do. Gloves! D'ye suppose Adam, the great father of mankind, wore gloves? You want to get out and live next to grand old Nature, and old Mother Earth. Those Pallinders are kind of dressy people, hey? Well, I don't care how dressy they are; they can wear all the gloves they damn please. I'll let you know, sir, that a Gwynne in his undershirt would be enough too good for any Pallinder that ever lived—yes, or anybody else either!" A mottled flush appeared on his old face; he raised his voice; he made wild hasty gestures, thumping with his cane. "You want me to spend money on gloves—drivelling ostentation! Gold's the curse of this country, and you want me to——" Gwynne was a little alarmed at these signs of excitement.

"All right, Cousin Steven, never mind," he said soothingly. "I—I just wanted you to be comfortable, you know. You'd just as lief go and see Doctor Vardaman, wouldn't you?"

Steven was readily mollified—or perhaps, diverted would be the better word. Jack? Yes, he wanted to see old Jack—he wanted to talk to him about something. Jack Vardaman was a man of sound sense, if he could be brought to the right views. "He's been cramped by—by his career, and his profession," said the old man, gesticulating with one hand as they walked. "I tried it, studying medicine, you know—but it's not broad enough, Gwynne, not broad enough. Jack finds it hard to grasp any new ideas. I said to him the last time I was in: 'John, this money trouble we're labouring under all proceeds from—from—from the circulating medium. Why have any? Why have any circulating medium? Poverty is a lacking in the essentials of life because of waste on the superfluities through the use of money—circulating medium; you want to rid yourself of the—the—the economic compulsion to wrong-doing—I've been studying a pamphlet by William P. Drinkwater that goes to the heart of the financial situation in this country.' I say, get rid of the circulating medium. Gwynne, do away with it utterly, fall back on exchange of the—the products of labour, and an era of prosperity will set in such as this country has never seen!"

Gwynne reflected with a wry smile that it would be interesting to hear an expression of opinion from Jake Bennett on the subject; times were hard in eighty-one, as some of us remember, and in these disjointed arguments, Gwynne recognised some echo of the political agitations of the day. To be fair, Steven Gwynne was no more astray in speech or manner than many of the William P. Drinkwaters; the exasperating thing about him was that constant appearance of being able to control himself, if he only would, which seems to be one of the specific symptoms of unsoundness.

"You will find that the lack—I mean the absence of a medium of coinage," said Steven, as they climbed on the car—"By George! It is cold, isn't it?" he interrupted himself, "I guess I'll put my mitts on." And, to Gwynne's surprise, he produced those symbols of ostentation and effeminacy from the pocket of his overcoat, and began to adjust them with every display of comfort. They were a bright "Maria-Louise" purple. "Knit worsted, you know," said Steven. "I got 'em at Billy Sharpe's at the corners, for seventy-five cents——"

"You're getting effeminated, Cousin Steven," said Gwynne, soberly. "Mittens! The idea! Do you suppose Adam wore mittens?"

"Well, I understand Adam didn't wear breeches either," said Steven, with an unexpected flash of humour. "I'm not luxurious, anyhow, like you with your kids. But you're young—you'll learn." He laid his hand on Gwynne's arm affectionately. "You're a good boy, Gwynne, if you do get kind of stuck-up notions, you're a good boy," he said with earnestness—and the young man's heart smote him.

He found his cousin so tractable on the journey out that he began to have hopes of persuading Steven to the collar and wash-basin, with Doctor Vardaman's help. "I'd rather Mrs. Pallinder saw him looking clean, anyhow—she's so dainty herself," thought Gwynne, with a burning change of colour. Alas! No such good luck! As they neared the Swiss cottage, they beheld the lady tripping out from the door, exquisitely trim and gracious, smiling and showing all her pretty white teeth, with Doctor Vardaman escorting her to his gate, in his pleasantly formal old way. Mrs. Pallinder dimpled, and flashed her clear grey eyes under their amazingly black lashes and brows at Gwynne; she was en-haloed in rich furs and soft scrolls of ostrich-plumes; she rustled and fluttered with an enticing suggestion of dainty womanliness, and there was something even in the frail absurdity of her little, thin, high-heeled and pointed-toed boots that appealed to the masculine sense almost touchingly. Old Steven Gwynne himself felt this jewelry-box charm; he looked at her with open, child-like, rather frightened admiration. Wealth and luxury for which in the abstract he had—or believed himself in all sincerity to have—so vigorous a disdain, exhibited thus concretely, stunned the old man; Mrs. Pallinder, to the ordinary view merely an unusually handsome and well-dressed woman, somehow represented to Steven that material power, confident, lucky, successful, to which he had long ago bowed down in the person of Governor Gwynne; and, if it had not been for the uplifting consciousness of being that great man's cousin, Steven would have shuffled and stammered before her like any school-boy.

"Mr. Peters," said Mrs. Pallinder, delightedly. She withdrew a hand from her coquettishly fashionable little muff—we wore them very small in those days, a mere cuff of fur—and gave it to Gwynne, who was oddly nervous, with soothing self-possession. The readiness with which she set herself to the business of putting Steven at his ease was a grateful thing to see; she accepted his purple mitt, and shed on him a smile as winning as if he had been the most desirable acquaintance in the world. These courtesies, we have been assured, are, in reality, nothing but small evidences of a kind heart; yet I never thought Mrs. Pallinder a kind-hearted woman. Her elegant cordialities were not spontaneous; she spread the conversation with a thin glittering varnish of smiles, agreeable speeches, pretty conventionalities; one sometimes felt uneasily that her tact was almost aggressively brilliant, her good manners too flawless. But Gwynne, having in mind, maybe, this very incident, was quite enthusiastic about her to his intimates; Mrs. Pallinder was so kind, so considerate, a—a—a really sweet woman—sweet-tempered, he meant, of course, wasn't she? As for Steven, he proclaimed her without exception the most polished lady he had ever met. Doctor Vardaman—but one could not always be sure of what Doctor Vardaman thought. "Mrs. Pallinder was an uncommon sort of woman," he used to say with an unreadable expression. "I admired her very much—almost as much as I wondered at her. When we met at my gate she contrived to look at us three men, as if every one severally were the man in the world in whom she was most interested. Are ladies taught these things from their cradles? I am told so; but I never saw one of them do it so well as Mrs. Pallinder. It's a tolerably stiff job to listen to poor Steven discourse on the circulating medium. Experto credite! I've done it myself for hours at a stretch that I piously hope will count for me when I get to the Place of Punishment. But I'm sure I never could have done it with so perfect a grace as Mrs. Pallinder. We went up to the house, she walking the whole way with Steven, Gwynne and I following in the rear, humbly grateful and admiring. 'You're not a married man, Mr. Gwynne?' says Mrs. Pallinder, snatching at a change of topic in one of the pauses of Steven's eloquence. 'I've met so many charming Mrs. Gwynnes——' 'Madame, I am not,' said Steven. 'Do you know why the eagle is called the bird of freedom, Mrs. Pallinder?' Here," said the doctor, with a malicious grin, "I thought I detected a sort of crooked sequence in Steven's thoughts, but Mrs. Pallinder was as nearly gravelled as I ever saw her; and you must admit the subject was somewhat abruptly introduced. 'A—er—why, I must give it up, I am afraid,' she said. 'It's a riddle, isn't it? I'm not very good at riddles.' 'Because it never mates in captivity, ma'am,' says Steven profoundly. 'That's the way I am; the chains of gold, the circulating——' and I suppose he was going to intimate by a delicate allegory that he couldn't afford a wife and family, but we reached the house at that moment, and the changes in its appearance switched him off, as it were."

The old man was, in fact, rather pathetically overawed by all the Pallinder sumptuousness; he looked down at his boots doubtfully, and trod with caution on the velvet moss-roses and lilies of the south parlour. It required the telling of the cut-glass chandelier story to revive his spirit; and Mrs. Pallinder further smoothed matters by asking his opinion of the new wall-paper with a caressing deference. Afterwards, it is true, Steven went away in a mood of gracious approval, and bragged freely with no little satisfaction about his tenants in his house; but at the first moment, he was both startled and unhappy. There were gilt mirrors all about that gave back a pitiless reflection of the party, and of them all, I believe that Doctor Vardaman was the only one who was not faintly ill at ease. The situation was actually relieved by the entrance of old Mrs. Botlisch, as incongruous a figure in the scene as Steven himself. "And somehow or other," said the doctor, "I am sure the look of her for once was a kind of comfort to Gwynne; it seemed as if she and poor Steven were a—well, a stand-off, with the balance in favour of Steven. You know Mrs. Pallinder was always saying in a gentle regretful way that her mother was 'eccentric.' She was, in fact—ahem!—I am informed by the ladies of my acquaintance," Doctor Vardaman would say, with another grin, "that she was a dreadfully 'common' old person who drank and swore like a trooper, but was as sane as anybody. Whereas, we all know that whatever Steven's faults, he was not—was not entirely responsible."

"That old Gwynne feller's crazy, ain't he?" the old woman said to him as the doctor sat at the Pallinder dinner-table that evening. There were a number of other guests, for the colonel's hospitalities were already well known; it was a pleasing picture of evening-coats, white shoulders, brilliant glassware, and cutlery; and Mrs. Pallinder at the head, lent the table a distinction like that of some expensive ornament or flower. Across the way sat her mother, shovelling in French peas on the blade of her knife, that being one of the phases of her eccentricity, and disposing of everything from soup to sweets with an audible gusto. "It's astonishing!" said the doctor to himself, his glance travelling from one woman to the other. "Pardon me, Mrs. Botlisch, you were saying——?"

"I say that old Gwynne feller's crazy," said Mrs. Botlisch. "He ain't dangerous, is he?"

"What? Steven?" said the doctor, and although she was very nearly right, he recoiled inwardly. "Why, no, he's not crazy, he's a little—a little eccentric," he finished, conscious of a wretched irony in the phrase.

"Pooh, pshaw, don't you tell me, Doc., he's as crazy as a bedbug," said Mrs. Botlisch coolly. "It's a pity about that young Peters' folks being that way, so many of 'em, ain't it?"