king the mistake of omitting a friend with so eligible
a backing. Millard was invited, rather to his own surprise, and taken
into preliminary councils as a matter of course. When the introductory
minuet had been danced, and the ball was at its height, Philip
Gouverneur, with a smile of innocence, led his friend straight to Miss
Vandeleur, who proudly wore the very dress in which, according to a
rather shaky tradition, her great-great aunt had poured tea for General
Washington.

"Miss Vandeleur," said Philip, "let me present Mr. Millard."

Miss Vandeleur gave Millard one of the bows she kept ready for people of
no particular consequence.

"Mr. Millard is real old crockery," said Philip in a half-confidential
tone. "Some of us think it enough to be Revolutionary, but he is a
descendant of Rip Van Dam, the old governor of New York in the
seventeenth century."

Miss Vandeleur's face relaxed, and she remarked that judging from his
name, as well as from something in his appearance, Mr. Millard must
have come, like herself, from one of the old Huguenot families.

"Revolutionary, too, Charley?" said Philip, looking at Millard. Then to
Miss Vandeleur, "One of his ancestors was second in command in the
charge on Stony Point."

"Ah, Philip, you put it too strongly, I--"

"There's Governor Cadwallader waiting to speak to you, Miss Vandeleur,"
interrupted Philip, bowing and drawing Millard away. "Don't say a word,
Charley. The most of Miss Vandeleur's information is less sound than
what I told her about you. Nine-tenths of all such a genealogy huckster
takes for gospel is just rot. I knew that Rip Van Dam would impress her
if I put it strongly and said seventeenth century. You see the further
away your forefather is, the more the virtue. Ancestry is like
homeopathic medicine, the oftener it is diluted the greater the
potency."

"Yes," said Millard; "and a remote ancestor has the advantage that
pretty much everything to his discredit has been forgotten."

Charley knew that this faking of a Millard pedigree by his friend would
prove as valuable to him as a decoration in the eyes of certain
exclusive people. His conscience did not escape without some qualms; he
did not like to be labeled what he was not. But he had learned by this
time that society of every grade is in great part a game of Mild Humbug,
and that this game, like all others, must be played according to rule.
Each player has a right to make the most of his hand,