six-forty-five and encountered Mrs. Summerstone. She was a stout,
elderly, decayed gentlewoman, a daughter of the great Porter-
Rickington family that had shaken the entire Pacific Coast with its
financial crash in the middle seventies. Despite her stoutness, she
suffered from what she called shattered nerves.

"This will never, never do, Richard," she censured. "Here is dinner
waiting fifteen minutes already, and you have not yet washed your face
and hands."

"I am sorry, Mrs. Summerstone," Young Dick apologized. "I won't keep
you waiting ever again. And I won't bother you much ever."

At dinner, in state, the two of them alone in the great dining room,
Young Dick strove to make things easy for the lady, whom, despite his
knowledge that she was on his pay-roll, he felt toward as a host must
feel toward a guest.

"You'll be very comfortable here," he promised, "once you are settled
down. It's a good old house, and most of the servants have been here
for years."

"But, Richard," she smiled seriously to him; "it is not the servants
who will determine my happiness here. It is you."

"I'll do my best," he said graciously. "Better than that. I'm sorry I
came in late for dinner. In years and years you'll never see me late
again. I won't bother you at all. You'll see. It will be just as
though I wasn't in the house."