Verbena invested the first quarterly installment in a long-dreamed-of marble reproduction of her right hand which, after years of thinking daily about the matter, she had decided was a shade more perfect than the left.
If one dim eye makes a man king among blind men--to translate to the vernacular Verbena's elegant reasoning--an income, however trifling, if it have no taint of toil, no stench of sweat upon it, makes its possessor entitled to royal consideration in a family of paupers and dead beats, degraded by harboring a breadwinner of an Estelle.

No sudden recipient of a dazzling, drenching shower of wealth was ever more exalted than was Verbena, once in possession of "_my_ legacy." Until the Rev.Eliot Wilmot's posthumous blessing descended upon her, the Wilmots lived together in comparative peace and loving kindness.

They were all, except for their mania of genealogy, good-humored, extremely well-mannered people, courteous as much by nature as by deliberate intent.

But, with the coming of the blessing, peace and friendliness in that family were at an end.

Old Preston Wilmot and Arden railed unceasingly against the "traitor" Eliot; Verbena defended him.