o have you come up and look
at my collection. There is every kind of bird that has been shot in
Virginia fields or Virginia waters. I've got a Trumpeter Swan. The
last one was seen in the Chesapeake in sixty-nine. Mine was killed and
stuffed in the forties. He is in a perfect state of preservation, and
in the original glass case."

"I'd like to come," George told him. "Could I--to-night? I don't know
just how long I shall be staying down."

"Any time--any time. To-night, of course. There's nothing I like
better than to talk about my birds, unless it is to eat them. Isn't
that so, Claudia?"

"Yes, Father." Mrs. Beaufort was studying Dalton closely. His manner
was perfect. It was, indeed, she decided, too perfect. "He is
thinking too much of the way he does it." The one sin in Aunt
Claudia's mind was social self-consciousness. People who thought all
of the time about manners hadn't been brought up to them. They must
have them without thinking. George was not, she decided, a gentleman
in the Old Dominion sense. Dalton would have been amazed could he have
looked into Aunt Claudia's mind and have seen himself a--Publican.

"Father," she said, after Dalton had left them, "did I hear you invite
him to dinner?"

"Yes, my dear, but he could not come----"

"I'm glad he couldn't."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure that he's--our kind----"

"Nonsense, he's a very fine fellow."

"How do you know?"

"Well, I know this," testily, "that I am not to be instructed as to the
sort of person I can ask to my house."

"Oh, Father, I didn't mean that. Of course you can do as you please."

"Of course I shall, Claudia."

"I think he is charming," said Mrs. Paine. "He has lovely eyes."

"Hasn't he?" said little Becky.

CHAPTER III

THE WOLF IN THE FOREST

I

The Bird Room at Judge Bannister's was back of the library. It was a
big room lined with glass cases. There hung about it always the faint
odor of preservatives. The Trumpeter Swan had a case to himself over
the mantel. He had been rather stiffly posed on a bed of artificial
moss, but nothing could spoil the beauty of him--the white of his
plumage, the elegance of his lines. He was one of a dying race--the
descendants of the men who had once killed for food had killed later to
gratify the vanity of women who must have swansdown to set off their
beauty, puffs to powder their noses. No more did great flocks wing an
exalted flight, high in the hea