him with fewer clouds on a rather melancholy spirit, a readier tongue,
and a complete recovery from the habits of sighing and of leaving the
house abruptly.

Betty's maid dressed her in a bright blue taffeta, softened with much
white lace, and she went slowly down to the hall, rustling her skirts
that Emory might hear and come out for a word before dinner if he
liked. It was a relief to be able to coquet with him without fearing
that he would go home and shoot himself; and it helped him to sustain
the pleasant fiction that he still was in love with her.

He came out at once and raised her hand to his lips, murmuring a
compliment as his grandfather might have done. He was only thirty-two,
but his face was sallow and lined from trouble and fever. Otherwise he
was very handsome, with his golden head and intellectual blue eyes,
his haughty profile and tall figure, listlessly carried as it was. In
spite of the fact that he took pride in dressing well, he always
looked a little old-fashioned. When with Betty, invariably as smart as
Paris and New York could make her, he almost appeared as if wearing
his father's old clothes. His Southern accent and intonation were
nearly as broad as a negro's. Betty had almost lost hers; she retained
just enough to enrich and individualize without a touch of
provincialism. She belonged to that small class of Americans whose
ear-mark is the absence of all Americanisms.

Mr. Emory looked perturbed.

"There is something I should like to say," he remarked hesitatingly.
"There is yet a quarter of an hour before dinner. I think this old
hall with its portraits of your grandmothers is a good place to say it