unes to a little, lithe, dark-eyed woman whose
speech and greeting were of the soft-lipped South. She in turn presented
me to her mother, a black-browed snowy-haired old lady with a cap of
priceless Venetian point, hands that must have held many hearts in their
time, and a dignity as unquestioned and unquestioning as an empress. She
was, indeed, a Burton of Savannah, who, on their own ground, out-rank
the Lees of Virginia. The rest of the company came from Buffalo,
Cincinnati, Cleveland and Chicago, with here and there a softening
southern strain. A party of young folk popped corn beneath a mantelpiece
surmounted by a Gainsborough. Two portly men, half hidden by a cased
harp, discussed, over sheaves of typewritten documents, the terms of
some contract. A knot of matrons talked servants--Irish _versus_
German--across the grand piano. A youth ravaged an old bookcase, while
beside him a tall girl stared at the portrait of a woman of many loves,
dead three hundred years, but now leaping to life and warning under the
shaded frame-light. In a corner half-a-dozen girls examined the glazed
tables that held the decorations--English and foreign--of the late Lord
Marshalton.

'See heah! Would this be the Ordeh of the Gyartah?' one said, pointing.

'I presoom likely. No! The Garter has "_Honey swore_"--I know that much.
This is "Tria juncta" something.'

'Oh, what's that cunning little copper cross with "For Valurr"?' a third
cried.

'Say! Look at here!' said the young man at the bookcase. 'Here's a first
edition of _Handley Cross_ and a Beewick's _Birds_ right next to
it--just like so many best sellers. Look, Maidie!'

The girl beneath the picture half turned her body but not her eyes.

'You don't tell _me_!' she said slowly. 'Their women amounted to
something after all.'

'But Woman's scope, and outlook was vurry limmutted in those days,' one
of the matrons put in, from the piano.

'Limmutted? For _her_? If they whurr, I guess she was the limmut. Who
was she? Peters, whurr's the cat'log?'

A thin butler, in charge of two footmen removing the tea-batteries, slid
to a table and handed her a blue-and-qilt book. He was button-holed by
one of the men behind the harp, who wished to get a telephone call
through to Edinburgh.

'The local office shuts at six,' said Peters. 'But I can get through
to'--he named some town--'in ten minutes, sir.'

'That suits me. You'll find me here when you've hitched up. Oh, say,
Peters! We--M