CHAPTER TWO

THE INDOMITABLE MISS VAN GORDER

Miss Cornelis Van Gorder, indomitable spinster, last bearer of a
name which had been great in New York when New York was a red-roofed
Nieuw Amsterdam and Peter Stuyvesant a parvenu, sat propped up in
bed in the green room of her newly rented country house reading the
morning newspaper. Thus seen, with an old soft Paisley shawl tucked
in about her thin shoulders and without the stately gray
transformation that adorned her on less intimate occasions,--she
looked much less formidable and more innocently placid than those
could ever have imagined who had only felt the bite of her tart wit
at such functions as the state Van Gorder dinners. Patrician to her
finger tips, independent to the roots of her hair, she preserved, at
sixty-five, a humorous and quenchless curiosity in regard to every
side of life, which even the full and crowded years that already lay
behind her had not entirely satisfied. She was an Age and an
Attitude, but she was more than that; she had grown old without
growing dull or losing touch with youth--her face had the delicate
strength of a fine cameo and her mild and youthful heart preserved
an innocent zest for adventure.

Wide travel, social leadership, the world of art and books, a dozen
charities, an existence rich with diverse experience--all these
she had enjoyed energetically and to the full--but she felt, with
ingenious vanity, that there were still sides to her character which
even these had not brought to light. As a little girl she had