"The same thoughtful Aunt Lydia," he observed, ironically. He gave his
mustache an upward screw, then dropped his eyes to his knees and his
fingers to the rungs of his chair. His design seemed to be to figure a
slave shrinking on the auction-block. "Do you mean to say you haven't got
one for me already?" He ignored the business side of her proposal.

"Well, you needn't put it _that_ way," she rejoined. "You know perfectly
well that I am not a match-maker, nor anything like it. And it wouldn't
please me at all to have anybody say so of me or to think of me in that
way." She was quite sincere in all this.

Truesdale, however, held the opposite view, and, considering all the
circumstances, liked his aunt none the less. She _was_ a match-maker--a
very keen and persistent one; but he felt that her excesses in this
direction were to be viewed simply as an acknowledgement to fortune for
having guided her own courses to such advantage. She had come out from
Trenton some eighteen years before with a pretty face, a light wardrobe,
a limited purse, and an invitation (extended by a benevolent aunt) to
remain as long as she liked. She had never gone back. She met Alfred
Rhodes, Eliza Marshall's younger brother; and from the slight foothold
offered by her kindly relative she had advanced to an ample fortune and a
complete freedom. She was grateful for all this, and gratitude took the
form of her extending, in turn, unlimited invitations to other girls with
pretty faces, light purses, and limited wardrobes. She almost always had
some comely niece or younger cousin in the house. She drove with them,
she shopped with them, she gave teas and receptions for them. She
summoned young men in numbers; she had her billiard-table re-covered; she
could always produce sherry and cigars when really put to it; she almost
transformed her home into a club-house. "For," said she, "I can never