body
else took the trouble to climb up, it was so much pleasanter to watch
these people than to talk to them; they had such pretty clothes, and
wore them so well, and made such effective, changing pictures of
themselves in the big room.

Sometimes they amused themselves with the parlour tricks that they had
so many of, and sometimes they drifted in and out in groups of two and
three, to more intimate parts of the house: the smoking-room, or Mrs.
Everard's suite, if she was well, or out through the French windows,
across the broad, glassed-in veranda that ran the length of the room and
darkened it unpleasantly by day, into the Colonel's rose garden. It was
warm enough for that to-night, and a yellow, September moon showed
invitingly through the windows. Mrs. Grant, who liked to be alone, as
Judith could quite understand, since she had to listen to the Honourable
Joe's big voice so much of the time, was slipping out through a window
now, taking the coat that Mr. Sebastian brought her, but refusing to let
him go with her.

He went to the piano, ran his thin, flexible brown fingers over the
keys, struck into a Spanish serenade, and sang a verse of it in his
brilliant but tricky tenor, with his languishing eyes upon Mrs. Burr.

"Ranny, do you want to tell the whole world of our love? You terrify
me," she said, and took refuge on one arm of the Colonel's chair.
Judith's mother, protesting that she needed a chaperon, promptly took
possession of the other arm, disposing her blue, trailing skirts
demurely, and looking more Madonna-like than ever through the cloudy
smoke of a belated cigarette. The others made themselves equally
comfortable, all but Judge Saxon, who had ceased to advertise the fact
that he was not.

"Smile at me," Mrs. Kent begged, hovering over his chair; "I'm going to
sing by and by, and I need it. Do smile! If you don't, I'm going to kiss
you, Judge."

"Go as far as you like, but be sure how far you like to go, Edith," said
the Judge quietly. She flushed, and turned away abruptly, playing with a
pile of songs.

"I'm looking for a lullaby. Our youngest seems to need it."

"Not in your line, are they?" said Sebastian, and began to improvise
one, while Judith, in her corner, closed her eyes contentedly. Whether
there was any truth or not in the report that he had been playing a
ramshackle piano in an East Side restaurant in New York when the Colonel
picked him up, Sebastian could do charming things with