d, is your youthful maiden!"
Holding toward the lamp a glass, clear as crystal, with luster like a
gem. "Dancing eyes; a figure upright as a reed; the bearing of a
nymph; the soul of a water lily before it has opened its leaves to the
wooing moonlight!"

[Illustration]

"Lord! How you go on!" exclaimed Scroggs. "What with a sampling this
and sampling that, my head's going round like a top. If there's
anything in the cellar the old patroons put down we haven't tried,
sir, I beg to defer the sampling. I am of the sage's mind--'Of all men
who take wine, the moderate only enjoy it,' says Master Bacon, or some
one else."

"Pass the bottle!" answered the other. "Gently, man! Don't disturb its
repose, and remember it disdains the perpendicular."

"So will I soon," muttered Scroggs. "I hope you'll excuse me, sir, but
that last drop of Veuve Cliquot was the whip-cord that started the top
going, and, on my word"--raising his hands to his head--"I feel like
holding it on to keep it from spinning off."

"Spinning or not, you shall try this vintage"--the young man's eyes
gleamed with such fire as shone in the glass--"and drink to Constance
Carew!"

"Constance Carew!" stammered the other, desperately swallowing the
toast.

Mauville slowly emptied the glass. "A balsamic taste, slightly piquant
but agreeable," he observed. "A dangerous wine, Scroggs! It carries no
warning; your older kind is like a world-worn coquette whose glances
at once place you on the defensive. This maiden vintage, just
springing into glorious womanhood, comes over you like a springtime
dream."

"Who--who is she?" muttered Scroggs.

"She is not in the scroll you prepared for my lamented kinsman, eh?
They are, for the most part, deep red, dark scarlet--that list of fair
dames! She doesn't belong to them--yet! No title, man; not even a
society lady. A stroller, which is next door to a vagrant."

"Well, sir, she's a woman and that's enough," replied the lawyer. "And
my opinion is, it's better to have nothing to do with 'em."

This sententious remark seemed to arouse Scroggs to momentary
vivacity.

"Now there was my Lord Hamerton, whose picture is upstairs," he went
on quickly, like a man who is bent on grasping certain ideas before
they escape him. "He brought a beautiful woman here--carried her off,
they say from England--and installed her as mistress of the manor. I
have heard my father say that his great-grandfather, who was my lord's
solicitor,