It's astonishing you never found a good fit----" "That was all part of the dream interval," he interrupted, a little out of countenance, "everything was absurdly unreal.

Are you going to be nice to me, Kathleen ?" "Of course I am, you blessed boy!" she said, taking him in her vigorous young arms and kissing him squarely and thoroughly.

Then she held him at arms' length and looked him very gravely in the eyes: "Love her a great deal, Duane," she said in a low voice; "she needs it." "I could not help doing it." But Kathleen repeated: "Love her enough.

She will be yours to make--yours to unmake, to mould, fashion, remould--with God's good help.

Love her enough." "Yes," he said, very soberly.
A slight constraint fell between them; they spoke of the fete, and Kathleen presently left to superintend details which never worried her, never disturbed the gay and youthful confidence which had always from the beginning marked her successful superintendence of the house of Seagrave.
Geraldine and Scott were very busy playing hostess and host, receiving new-comers, renewing friendships interrupted by half a summer's separation; but there was very little to do except to be affable, for Kathleen's staff of domestics was perfectly adequate--the old servants of the house of Seagrave, who were quite able by themselves to maintain the household traditions and whip into line of duty the new and less conscientious recruits below stairs.
A great many people were gathered on the terrace when Duane descended the stairs, on his way to inspect his temporary quarters in Miller's loft, at Hurryon Lodge.
He stopped and spoke to many, greeted Delancy Grandcourt's loquacious and rotund mother, politely listened to her scandalous budget of gossip, shook hands cordially with her big, handsome daughter, Catharine, a strapping girl, with the shyly honest eyes of her brother and the rather heavy but shapely body and limbs of an indolent Juno.