Piet was silent.

"Why, Tom keeps telling me that mother was a Cabot, and grandfather a
judge, and talking Winthrop Colony and Copleys and Gilbert Stuarts to
me!" the girl burst out presently. "As if that wasn't the very REASON
for my being honorable! That's what blood's for!"

Still Piet was silent, his kind, ugly face set and dark.

"And then, you know," said Sammy, with sudden brightness, "when I get
back, and see the dear old place again, and get a good big breath of
AIR,--which we don't have here!--why, it'll all straighten out and seem
right again. My hope is," she added, turning her honest eyes to the
gloomy ones so near her, "my hope is that Anthony will be willing to
wait a while--"

"What makes you think he is likely to?" said Piet, dryly.

There was a silence. Then he added:

"When do you go?"

"The--the twenty-sixth, I believe. I've got aunty's consent--I go with
the Archibalds to San Francisco."

"And this is--?"

"The twentieth."

For some time after that they wove their way along the sweeping
Parkroads without speaking, and when they did begin to talk to one
another again, the subject was a different one and Mr. van Soop was
more cheerful. The tea hour was a fairly merry one. But when he left
Sammy, an hour later, at her aunt's door, he took off his big glove,
and grew a little white, and held out his hand to her and said:

"I won't see you again, Sammy. I've been thinking it over. You're
right; it's all my own fault. I was very wrong to attempt to persuade
you. But I won't see you again. Good-by."

"Why--!" began Sammy, in astonishment; then she looked down and
stammered, "Oh--," and finally she put her little hand in his and said
simply:

"Good-by."

Therefore it was a surprise to Mr. van Soop to find himself entering
Mrs. Bond's library just twenty-four hours later, and grasping the
hands of the slender young woman who rose from a chair by the fire.

"Sammy! You sent for me?"

Sammy looked very young in a little velvet gown with a skirt short
enough to show the big bows on her slippers. Her eyes had a childishly
bewildered expression.

"I wanted you," she said simply. "I--I've had a letter from Anthony. It
came only an hour ago. I don't know whether to be sorry or glad. Read
it! Read it!"

She sat on a little, low stool by the fire, and Piet flattened the many
loose pages of the letter on his knee and read.

Anthony had written on the glazed, ruled single sheets of the
"Metr