the slate-blue eyes of the listener, but
Doctor Williams did not see them. If he had, he would not have
understood; neither would he have plumbed the depths of misery in that
whispered saying of Ardea's as she turned and fled to her room: "O Tom!
how could you! how could you!"

XXVII

SWEPT AND GARNISHED

Thomas Jefferson Gordon, Bachelor of Science, and one of the six
prize-men in his class, was expected home on the first day of July; and
it was remarked as a coincidence by the curious that Deer Trace
manor-house was closed for the summer no more than a week before the
return of the Gordon black sheep.

That Tom was a black sheep, a hopeless and incorrigible social
iconoclast, was no longer a matter of doubt in the minds of any.
Something may be forgiven a promising young man who has been unhappy
enough, or imprudent enough, to begin to make history for himself in the
irresponsible 'teens; but also the act of oblivion may be repealed. When
it became noised about that there were two children instead of one in
the old dog-keeper's cabin in the glen, Mountain View Avenue was justly
indignant, and even the lenient Gordonians scowled and shook their heads
at the mention of the young boss's name. All the world loves a lover, as
in just measure it despises a libertine; and there were fathers of
daughters among the miner and foundry folk of the town.

On the lips of the transplanted urbanites of the hill houses comment was
less elemental, but no less condemnatory. It was no wonder the Dabneys
had closed their house and had gone to Crestcliffe Inn to save Ardea the
humiliation of having to meet Tom before she was safely married to
Vincent Farley. It was what any self-respecting young woman would wish
under like trying conditions. The country colony approved; likewise, it
commended Miss Dabney's foresight and prudence in causing the Bryerson
woman and her two children to disappear from the cabin in the glen;
though Mrs. Vancourt Henniker, in secret session over the tea-cups with
the elder Miss Harrison, voiced her surprise that Ardea could continue
to be charitable in that quarter.

"It is quite beyond me," was the matron's thin-lipped phrasing of it.
"When one remembers that this wretched mountain girl has been Ardea's
understudy from the very beginning--faugh! it is simply disgusting! I
should think Ardea would never want to see or hear of her again."

To such an atmosphere of potential social ostracism Tom ret