And then she took upon her lap a large volume, weighing perhaps a dozen pounds, entitled "Historic Families in America," in which first place was given to an account of the glories of the De Peysters.

Though premiership was no better than the family's due, she was secretly pleased with her forebears' place in the volume--in a sublimated way it was the equivalent of going in first to dinner among distinguished guests.

She liked frequently to glance leisurely through the pages, tasting here and there; and now, as she did whenever she read the familiar text, she lingered over certain passages of the deferential genealogist--whom, hardly conscious of the act of imagination, she could almost see in tight satin breeches, postured on his knees, holding out these tributes to her on a golden salver:-- "In 1148 Archambaud de Paster" ...

"From an early period of the fourteenth century the De Peysters were among the richest and most influential of the patrician families of Ghent" ...

"The exact genealogical connection between the De Peysters of the fourteenth century and the above-noted sixteenth and seventeenth century ancestors of the American De Peysters has not been traced, as the work of translating and analyzing the records of the intervening period is still incompleted.