h of
her hostess was scorned by Mrs. Poly, her own "a's" being as narrow as
the needle through which the rich man reaches heaven.) "We came here
from Richmond when I was a bride--that's twenty-one years ago--and
Damory Court was forsaken then. And think what a condition the house
must be in now! Cared for by an agent who comes every other season from
New York. Trust a _man_ to do work like that!"

"I'm glad a Valiant is to occupy it," remarked Mrs. Mason in her sweet
flute-like voice. "It would be sad to see any one else there. For after
all, the Valiants were gentlemen."

Mrs. Gifford sniffed. "Would you have called Devil-John Valiant a
gentleman? Why, he earned the name by the dreadful things he did. My
grandfather used to say that when his wife lay sick--he hated her, you
know--he would gallop his horse with all his hounds full-cry after him
under her windows. Then that _ghastly_ story of the slave he pressed to
death in the hogshead of tobacco."

"I know," acquiesced Mrs. Mason. "He was a cruel man, and wicked, too.
Yet of course he was a gentleman. In the South the test of a gentleman
has never been what he _does_, but who he is. Devil-John was splendid,
for all his wickedness. He was the best swordsman in all Virginia. It
used to be said there was a portrait of him at Damory Court, and that
during the war, in the engagement on the hillside, a bullet took out one
of its eyes. But his grandson, Beauty Valiant, who lived at Damory
Court thirty years ago, wasn't his type at all. He was only twenty-five
when the duel occurred."

"He must have been brilliant," said the visitor, "to have founded that
great Corporation. It's a pity the son didn't take after him. Have you
seen the _papers_ lately? It seems that though he was to blame for the
wrecking of the concern they can't do anything to him. Some technicality
in the law, I suppose. But if a man is only rich enough they can't
convict him of anything. Why he should suddenly make up his mind to come
down _here_ I _can't_ see. With that old affair of his father's behind
him, I should think he'd prefer Patagonia."

"I take it, then, madam," Doctor Southall's forbidding voice rose from
the doorway, "that you are familiar with the circumstances of that old
affair, as you term it?"

The lady bridled. Her passages at arms with the doctor did not
invariably tend to sweeten her disposition. "I'm sure I only know what
people say," she said.

"'People?'" snorted the doctor