plunge into business; but underneath all was the
fear, which grew larger day by day, that he might receive from Katrine
the rebuff which his conduct toward her so richly merited.

Uncertainly he held the letter, reviewing one of the curious turns that
life had taken in giving Katrine an ally in his mother.

On one of his week-end visits to Bar Harbor, where Mrs. Ravenel was
still staying, her old gayety had led her one evening to the teasing
subject of his marrying. He was standing by the open casement, looking
into the twilight over the sea, when he answered her, and he could not
hide the break in his voice as he spoke. "I have the misfortune to love
the wrong woman, mother!"

"Frank!" The cry of alarm and tenderness and protest touched him
strangely.

"Yes," he went on, "and it's a hard fight."

She came near, putting her hand tenderly on his cheek. "Ah," she said,
"my boy, my boy!"

He drew her to him, and for the minute he seemed, indeed, a boy again,
coming to this sure haven of comfort, to the place where he had never
been criticised or told that he was wrong. "Yes, lady mother, I'm hard
hit. I fell in love with one whom I didn't think it square to the family
to marry. We have never made mis-alliances, in this country or the
other. I believed, and I believe still, that a man owes it to his
descendants, to the furthest generation, to marry for them. I believed,
and I believe still, that marriage is far less a matter of personal
inclination than most people consider it to be. I believe that when a
man marries a woman he does not marry her alone, but all of her
ancestors, and that he may expect to see the maternal grandfathers
appearing again in his own grandchildren."

"Certainly, dear," Mrs. Ravenel acquiesced, in a tone which indicated
there could be but one opinion on such a subject.

"You know how firmly I have believed this always, mother!"

She pressed his hand for reply.

"I told her that I could never marry her. But the thing was too strong
for me--I went away from the place where she was. Oh," he cried, in a
heat of self-abasing, "I grow cold when I think what a cad I was! I hurt
her so! But I did, too late, what I thought was right, what I had been
trained to do."

Far into the night, lying sleepless, with his hands folded under his
head, there came a light tap at his door, and he knew his mother had
come to him. She wore a rose-colored dressing-gown, and at sight of it
he remembered, with te