ith in my moral strength. Then Mr. Pound came up to
see me, having, as usual, commandeered Mr. Smiley's comfortable phaeton
for the transport of himself and Mrs. Pound. His hair was white now,
and he bent a little, and his voice had lost some of its pompous roll,
but his phrases were as round as ever. He insisted that I owned the
paper. He placed his hand on my head and for the information of Miss
Agnes Spinner named my good points much as a jockey would those of a
favorite horse. He congratulated himself on the success of his method
of training and called on Judge Malcolm to admit that his effort to
have his son go to Princeton had been based on a misconception of the
underlying merits of the McGraw system of education.

The Pounds stayed to supper, much to my mother's suppressed
indignation, for she had invited them, never thinking that under such
unusual circumstances they would accept so promptly, so that by the
time they drove away I had begun to feel that I must have made this
hurried journey just to say good-by to my old mentor. In the hour, all
too brief, that remained to me my mother broached the subject of my
broken engagement, for in that she saw the reason of my melancholy,
which I had been at pains to conceal. It could not be hidden from her
quick eyes. She was convinced that Gladys Todd was not in her right
mind; no woman in her right mind would deliberately refuse to marry
such a man as her son. Was it a question of blood? Surely there was
none better in the land than that which flowed in the veins of the
McLaurins. Was it money? There was no finer farm in all the valley
than the one which some day would be mine, with the bridge stock and
the Kansas bonds. Was it character? Recalling the Sunday afternoons
when she and I had worked together so patiently over the catechism and
Bible lessons, she was sure that she had done her duty toward me and
could never dream of my having failed in mine. So, to my mother's
thinking, the loss was Gladys Todd's, a consoling view of my plight
which she endeavored to make me take, and she sought to cheer me with a
highly uncomplimentary estimate of the frivolous character of my
quondam fiancee. It could serve no purpose for me to enlighten her as
to the real truth, for did she know the truth she might be haunted by
the dread spectre of self-destruction. So her last words as we parted
were an admonition to me not to think that all women were as blind and
as f