instead of
automobiles, and with children instead of servants.

Ten years had elapsed since the death of Arthur Tresslyn, and still the
house in the east Seventies held itself above water by means of that
meagre two thousand a month! These rare, almost priceless objects upon
which he now gazed had weathered the storm, proof against the temptations
that beset an owner embarrassed by their richness; they had maintained a
smug relationship to harmony in spite of the jangling of discordant
instruments, such as writs and attachments and the wails of insufferable
creditors who made the usual mistake of thinking that a man's home is his
castle and therefore an object of reprisal. The splendid porcelains, the
incomparable tapestries and the small but exquisite paintings remained
where they had been placed by the amiable but futile Arthur, and all the
king's men and all the king's horses could not have removed them without
Mrs. Tresslyn's sanction. The mistress of the house subsisted as best she
could on the pitiful income from a sequestered half-million, and lived in
splendour among objects that deluded even the richest and most arrogant of
her friends into believing that nothing was more remote from her
understanding than the word poverty, or the equally disgusting word
thrift.

Here he had come to children's parties in days when he was a lad and Anne
a child of twelve, and here he had always been a welcome visitor and
playmate, even to the end of his college years. The motherless, fatherless
grandson of old Templeton Thorpe was cherished among heirlooms that never
had had a price put upon them. Of all the boys who came to the Tresslyn
house, young Braden Thorpe was the heir with the most potent possibility.
He did not know it then, but now he knew that on the occasion of his
smashing a magnificent porcelain vase the forgiving kiss that Mrs.
Tresslyn bestowed upon his flaming cheek was not due to pity but to
farsightedness. Somehow he now felt that he could smash every fragile and
inanimate thing in sight, and still escape the kiss.

Not the least regal and imposing object in the room was the woman who
stood beside the fireplace, smiling as she always smiled when a situation
was at its worst and she at her best. Her high-bred, aristocratic face was
as insensitive to an inward softness as a chiseled block of marble is to
the eye that gazes upon it in rapt admiration. She had trained herself to
smile in the face of the disagr