orgeous autumn-clad mountains Dicky did not refer to Robert Gordon.

It was my mother-in-law who brought his name up the day of our return.
She had moved from the hotel where we had left her in the city to
the house at Marvin, and when we arrived there her greeting of me was
almost icy. As soon as we had taken off our wraps, she explained her
departure from the hotel without any questioning from us.

"I never have been so insulted and annoyed in my life," she began
abruptly, "and it is all your fault, Richard. If you never had brought
the unspeakable person over he would not have had the chance to annoy
me. And as for you, Margaret, I cannot begin to tell you what I think
of your conduct in leading your husband to believe you had never seen
the man before--"

"For heaven's sake, mother!" Dicky exploded, his slender patience
evidently worn to its last thread by his mother's incoherence, "what
on earth are you talking about?"

"Don't pretend ignorance," she snapped. "You introduced the man to
me yourself the night before you went on your trip. You cannot have
forgotten his name so soon."

"Robert Gordon!" Dicky exclaimed in amazement.

"Yes, Robert Gordon!" his mother returned grimly. "And let me tell
you, Richard Graham, that if you do not settle that man he will make
you the laughing stock and the scandal of everybody. The way he talks
of Margaret is disgusting."

Dicky's face became suddenly stern and set.

"He didn't exhibit his lack of good taste the first time he came over
to my table in the dining room," my mother-in-law went on. "But the
second time he sat down with me he began to talk of Margaret in the
most fulsome, extravagant manner. From that time his sole topic of
conversation was Margaret, the wonderful woman she had grown into, the
wonderful attraction she has for him. You would have thought him a
man who had discovered his lost sweetheart after years of wandering.
Imagine the lack of decency and good taste the man must have to say
such things to me, the mother of Margaret's husband!"

"Is that all you have to say, mother?" he asked.

She looked at him in amazement.

"Are you lost to all decency that you do not resent such extravagant
praise and admiration of your wife from the lips of another man?" she
demanded, and then in the same breath went on rapidly:

"Richard, you are perfectly hopeless! The man may have been in love
with Margaret's mother, I do not doubt that he was, but have you nev