in action. On his side, he did not fail to notice it--this
first movement in her which had seemed like an advance. He stopped his
buzz of talk at one moment and all the lines of his face relaxed as
though he were about to say something softer and deeper. But he only
caught his breath and changed to another story. He had remembered--and
just in time, he thought--the advice of Kate Waddington.

But in spite of that remembrance, he permitted himself the luxury of
being natural; and he talked continually until they were within the
Tiffany doors.

Mrs. Tiffany must hear all about it from both of them. When they came
to the hero's injury, she dismissed Eleanor, made him strip his massy
shoulder, and got out her pet liniment. The Judge, coming home in the
midst of these surgical cares, heard the story retold with heroic
additions by his wife. Dinner that night was a merry, a happy, an
intimate party.

When Bertram left, Mrs. Tiffany did not follow him to the door, as was
her old-fashioned custom. He waited a moment, as though expecting
something. His eyes were on Eleanor. She did not move. She only bade
him a simple and easy good night over her shoulder.

The old couple sat for a long time before the fire. Eleanor was
gone--not to bed, could they but have known it, but to sit by her
window and breathe bay-fragrance and drink the foggy night air off the
Gate.

The Judge smiled down on that faded daintiness at his feet.

"Are we now to consider him in the light of a nephew-in-law?" he
asked.

"It has bothered me a good deal," said Mattie Tiffany. "What do you
think I ought to do?"

"If that frightful social responsibility of yours drives you to
anything," responded the Judge, "I should say you'd best leave it
alone."

"But Edward, dear, I'm just like a mother to her--and goodness knows I
haven't always been the best of mothers. There was her father--you
know how long I shirked that--"

"The sin of omission that you will carry to your grave--"

"And somehow this is so like Billy Gray! It was just this way in her
mother's case. When Billy came around--you remember how bonny a boy he
was then, Edward--I, her own sister, could never tell how she felt
toward him. I've always told you that Eleanor has slipped a
generation. She's her grandmother, not her mother, in mind. But she's
just like her mother in one thing. You can't ever tell what she's
thinking about, and the deeper her thoughts go the harder it is to
tell! T