"Wild? Jonathan, I am surprised at you! Why, during the twenty years
that I knew him he never let fall so much as a single indelicate word in
my presence."

"I don't mean that exactly--but what about his relations with the women
around here?"

She flinched as if his words had struck her a blow.

"Dear Jonathan, your poor uncle would never have asked such a question."

Above the mantel there was an oil portrait of the elder Jonathan at the
age of three, painted astride the back of an animal that disported the
shape of a lion under the outward covering of a lamb.

"Ah, that's just it," commented Gay, while his inquiring look hung on
the picture. After a minute of uncertainty, his curiosity triumphed over
his discretion and he put, in an apologetic tone, an equally indelicate
question. "What about old Reuben Merryweather's granddaughter? Has she
been provided for?"

For an instant Mrs. Gay looked at him with shining, reproachful eyes
under a loosened curl of fair hair which was threaded with sliver. Those
eyes, very blue, very innocent, seemed saying to him, "Oh, be careful,
I am so sensitive. Remember that I am a poor frail creature, and do not
hurt me. Let me remain still in my charmed circle where I have always
lived, and where no unpleasant reality has ever entered." The quaint
peacock screen, brought from China by old Jonathan, cast a shadow on her
cheek, which was flushed to the colour of a faded rose leaf.