eyes followed him as he went, then wandered across the long
room to Emily. She had expected to feel a sense of responsibility
about Emily, but Uncle Austen, after a long and precise survey of her
from across the room, put his eye-glasses into their case and went to
her. His prim air of unbending for the festive occasion was almost
comical as he brought up youths to make them known. This done he fell
back to his general duties as host.

But Alexina, watching Emily, felt dissatisfaction with her, her
archness was overdone, her laughter was anxious.

Why should Emily stoop to strive so? With her milk-white skin and
chestnut hair, with her red lips and starry eyes there should have
belonged to her a pride and a young dignity. Alexina, youthfully
stern, turned away.

It brought her back to the amusing things of earth, however, that
Uncle Austen should take Emily home when it was over. Would Emily be
arch with Uncle Austen? Picture it!

Several of the older men lingered after the other guests were gone,
and they, with Harriet and Alexina, had coffee in the library. The
orderliness of the room, compared with the dishevelled appearance
elsewhere now the occasion was over, seemed cheerful, and these men
friends of Aunt Harriet were interesting. The talk was personal, as
among intimates. The local morning paper, opposed to Major Rathbone's
own, it seemed, had taxed the Major with aspiring to be the next
nominee of his party for Congress. And this was proving occasion for
much banter at his expense by the other men, for the truth was the
Major _was_ being considered as a possibility, but a possibility
tempered, for one thing, by the fact that his guerrilla past shed a
somewhat lurid light upon his exemplary present.

"But why want to keep it secret as if it were something dark and
plotting?" insisted Harriet Blair. "Why not come right out and admit
your willingness if your party wants you?"

The men laughed in varying degrees of delight at this feminine
perspicacity. The Major regarded her with somewhat comical humour,
looking a little shamefaced, though he was laughing too. "For the fear
my party can't afford to have me," he answered. "It takes money. They
are casting about for a richer available man first, and, that failing,
why--"

Here Austen Blair came in, bringing a breath of the November chill. Or
was it his own personality that brought the chill, Alexina wondered.
For, to do him justice, there was a distinction, a