done since her adored and
despotic childhood. She had fainted when Leslie had dived off the dock
at Newport, and had wept when Leslie had galloped through the big iron
gates on her own roan stallion; she had called in Christopher, as
Leslie's guardian, when Leslie, at fifteen, had calmly climbed into one
of the big cars, and driven it seven miles, alone and unadvised, and
totally without instruction or experience. Leslie knew that this
half-scandalized and wholly-admiring opposition was one of her
grandmother's secret satisfactions, and she combatted it only
mechanically.

"Have one, Grandma?"

"Have one--you wild girl you! I'd like to know what a nice young man
thinks when a refined girl offers him----"

"All the nice young men are smoking themselves, like chimneys!"

"Ah, but that's a very different thing. No, my dear, no man, whether he
smokes himself or not, likes to have a sweet, womanly girl descend----"

"Darling, didn't you ever do anything that my revered great-grandmother
Murison disapproved of?" Leslie teased, dropping on her knees before her
grandmother, and resting her arms on her lap.

"Smoke----! My mother would have fainted," said Mrs. Melrose. "And don't
blow that nasty-smelling stuff in my face!"

But she could not resist the pleasure that the lovely young face, so
near her own, gave her, and she patted it with her soft, wrinkled hand.
Suddenly Leslie jumped up eagerly, listening to the sound of voices in
the hall.

"There's Aunt Annie--oh, goody! I wanted to ask her----"

But it was Regina who opened the door, showing in two callers. The first
was a splendid-looking woman of perhaps forty-five, with a rosy,
cheerful face, and wide, shrewd gray eyes shining under a somewhat
shabby mourning veil. With her was a pretty girl of eighteen, or perhaps
a little more.

Leslie glanced astonished at her grandmother. It was extremely unusual
to have callers shown in in this unceremonious fashion, even if she had
been rather unprepossessed by these particular callers. The younger
woman's clothing, indeed, if plain, was smart and simple; her severe
tailor-made had a collar of beaver fur to relieve its dark blue, and her
little hat of blue beaver felt was trimmed only by a band of the same
fur. She had attractive dark-blue eyes and a flashing smile.

But her companion's comfortable dowdiness, her black cotton gloves, her
squarely built figure, and worn shoes, all awakened a certain contempt
in the gran