Rathbawne, in reality the beauty which Dorothy
by a fraction fell short of being, suffered by comparison with her
sister. She was desperately tired--that was in her smile. But there was
something else: a singular preoccupation which was nearly akin to
listlessness. That was in the droop of her eyelids, in the eloquently
inattentive gesture with which she touched a bowl of Gloire de Dijon
roses as she passed, and in her conventionally courteous acknowledgment
of young Nisbet's greeting. And, too, as she seated herself beside her
sister on the divan, there was perceptible purpose in her avoidance of
the lamp-light, her withdrawal into the dark, deep corner. To the
conversation which followed she contributed only such brief remarks as
were made necessary by those occasionally addressed to her.

The two women brought with them a delicious, indefinite atmosphere of
out-of-doors: that commingled smell of cold flowers, and cold flesh, and
cold fur, which is to a drawing-room in winter what a whiff of salt air
is in summer to a sun-baked hillside; and this proved almost too much
for the self-possession, already tottering, of young Nisbet. He had
always been accustomed to have the things he desired, had young Nisbet,
but these, until now, had been either creature comforts, readily
obtainable when one's father is a multi-millionaire, or athletic honors,
equally easy of attainment when one measures forty-two around the chest,
and can do one's quarter in something under fifty. Again, the Nisbets
lived on a ranch, and when one does not know people in New York one
spends the Sundays in New Haven, so that neither the terms nor the
vacations incidental to his four years at Yale had equipped him, in the
sense in which they equipped his fellows, for dealing with society.

Now that he was in Kenton City, representing his father's interests,
young Nisbet was painfully self-conscious of multitudinous shortcomings,
totally unsuspected hitherto. His speech was apparently hopelessly
incrusted with slang, his legs were too long, his ears protruded
abominably, his hair was desperately unruly, his freckles and his
capacity for blushing were inexhaustible. He was as much at ease in such
surroundings as these in which he now found himself as a trout in a
sandpile. The great room, with its costly furnishings, the tea-table
crowded with silver and fragile porcelain, the kettle purring
contentedly above the iridescent flame of the alcohol lamp,--above