ith this new man:
she had never seen a finer presence: the beard and brow quite lifted his
masculinity into aesthetic regions; she caught glimpses, too, of an
unfamiliar mongrel species of intellect with which she would relish
Platonic relations. Yet with this glow upon her she regarded the reformer's
noble face and benignant blond beard doubtfully, thinking how she used to
stick pins in brilliant bubbles when she was a child, and nothing would be
left but a patch of dirty water.

"Jane is out on the river, as usual?" she asked presently.

"Yes," said her father: "Mr. Neckart is with her. Neither of them will ever
stay under a roof if they can help it. They ought to have a dash of Indian
blood in their veins to account for such vagabondizing."

"Is Bruce Neckart here?" with a change in her tone which made the captain
look up at her involuntarily.

"Yes."

"I thought he was in Washington: I did not expect to meet him."

The judge puffed uneasily at his cigar. He was a family man, with a stout
wife and married son. He did not meet Miss Fleming once a year, but he felt
a vague jealousy of Neckart.

"By the way, you must be old acquaintances?" he said abruptly. "Both from
Delaware? Kent county?"

"Oh yes," with a shrill womanish laugh, very different from her usual sweet
boyish ha! ha! "Many's the day we rowed on the bay or dredged for oysters
together, dirty and ragged and happy. There is not very much difference in
our ages," seeing his look of surprise. "I look younger than I am, and
Bruce has grown old fast. At least, so I hear. I have not seen him for
years."

She was silent after that, and preoccupied as her admirers had never seen
her, and presently, hearing Jane's and Neckart's steps on the path, she
rose hastily and bade them good-night. They each shook hands with her, that
being one of the sacred rites in the Platonic friendships so much in vogue
now-a-days among clever men and women. Mr. Van Ness offered his hand last,
and Cornelia smiled cordially as she took it. But it was clammy and soft.
She rubbed her fingers with a shudder of disgust as she hurried up to her
own room. There she walked straight to her glass and turned up the lamp
beside it, looking long and fixedly at her face. She knew with exactness
the extent of its ugliness and its power.

"It is too late now even if it ever could have been," she said quietly, and
put out the light. Then she went to the window. Mr. Neckart had left Jane
insid