nts
think." Her smiling face became graver.

"I am so glad that matters are settled and that there's enough of your
estate left to keep your mother and Naida in comfort."

He nodded. "How is Scott coming out?"

"Why--he'll tell you. I don't believe he has very much left.
Geraldine's part is sufficient to run Roya-Neh, and the house in town,
if she and Scott conclude to keep it. Old Mr. Tappan has been quite
wonderful. Why, Duane, he's a perfect old dear; and we all are so
terribly contrite and so anxious to make amends for our horrid attitude
toward him when he ruled us with an iron rod."

"He's a funny old duck," mused Duane. "That son of his, Peter, has had
the 'indiwidool cultiwated' clean out of him. He's only a type, like
Gibson's drawings of Tag's son. Old Tappan may be as honest as a block
of granite, but it's an awful thing that he should ever have presided
over the destinies of children."

Kathleen sighed. "According to his light he was faithful. I know that
his system was almost impossible; I had to live and see my children
driven into themselves until they were becoming too self-centred to care
for anything else--to realise that there was anything else or anybody
else except their wishes and themselves to consider.... But, Duane, you
see the right quality was latent in them. They are coming out--they have
emerged splendidly. It has altered their lives fundamentally, of course,
but, sometimes, I wonder whether, in their particular cases, it was not
better to cripple the easy, irresponsible, and delightfully casual
social instincts of the House of Seagrave. Educated according to my own
ideas, they must inevitably have become, in a measure, types of the set
with which they are identified.... And the only serious flaw in the
Seagraves was--weakness."

Duane nodded, looking ahead into the star-illumined night.

"I don't know. Tappan's poison may have been the antidote for them in
this case. Tell me, Kathleen, has Geraldine--suffered?"

"Yes."

"Very--much?"

"Very much, Duane. Has she said nothing about it to you in her letters?"

"Nothing since she went to town that time. Every letter flies the red
cross. Does she still suffer?"

"I don't think so. She seems so wonderfully happy--so vigorous, in such
superb physical condition. For a month I have not seen that pitiful,
haunted expression come into her eyes. And it is not mere restlessness
that drives her into perpetual motion now; it's a new delight