"You were very particular about Wallie Sayre's heredity, Walter."

"That's different," he retorted, and retired into gloomy silence
behind his newspaper. Drat these women anyhow. It was like some
fool female to come there and rake up some old and defunct scandal.
He'd stand up for Dick, if it ever came to a show-down. He liked
Dick. What the devil did his mother matter, anyhow? If this town
hadn't had enough evidence of Dick Livingstone's quality the last
few years he'd better go elsewhere. He--

He got up and whistled for the dog.

"I'm going to take a walk," he said briefly, and went out. He
always took a walk when things disturbed him.

On the Sunday afternoon after Dick had gone Elizabeth was alone in
her room upstairs. On the bed lay the sort of gown Nina would have
called a dinner dress, and to which Elizabeth referred as her dark
blue. Seen thus, in the room which was her own expression, there
was a certain nobility about her very simplicity, a steadiness about
her eyes that was almost disconcerting.

"She's the saintly-looking sort that would go on the rocks for some
man," Nina had said once, rather flippantly, "and never know she
was shipwrecked. No man in the world could do that to me."

But just then Elizabeth looked totally unlike shipwreck. Nothing
seemed more like a safe harbor than the Wheeler house that afternoon,
or all the afternoons. Life went on, the comfortable life of an