"The summer preceding my senior year I went home to find stopping in the house a distant cousin of mine, a very nice pretty girl, whom I shortly discovered my mother had selected to be her third daughter-in-law. Then I revolted. In the first place Carrie, poor girl, was quite ignorant of the scheme and felt no interest whatever in me, and----" He broke off undecidedly, and looked with thoughtful eyes out across the level tennis courts. There was one thing he could not quite make up his mind to recount to Jean. The memory of it was growing faint (he could not but smile a little grimly as he thus argued to himself), and why rake up that disagreeable part of his past. In truth, how could he tell clear-eyed, pure-hearted Jean of that other! "Well?" interrogated Jean, cutting short his brief reverie. His indecision was at an end. He straightened himself, squared his shoulders, and answered with almost a show of relief. "Well, the very fact that I was to be compelled to marry aroused such a tempest of resentment within me that I had no room for any other emotion. For several weeks the atmosphere was thunderous, and at the end of that time the storm broke. I boldly announced my determination to remain single. My mother--well, she did not spare me. She told me I had always been a most unnatural and ungrateful son; that I had deliberately and intentionally thwarted her in every possible way without once considering the duty that I owed to her. She gave me to understand most emphatically that, from the day I finished my course at Annapolis, she would consider her obligations to me at an end. That I might go where I pleased, do what I pleased; but, that her home was no longer mine." "Oh, how cruel!" escaped from Jean. Her little hands were tightly clenched, and her eyes flashed indignantly. "It did seem rather hard, especially just at that time," he returned slowly, some unexpected thought lending an expression peculiarly somber and grave in his face. "But since then I have often thought that I gave my mother a great deal of provocation." "By not marrying according to her desire?" asked Jean, a little quickly. Farr looked straight in her eyes for a moment before answering dryly: "That was certainly a great factor; you see Carrie was an heiress, and owned a lot of property adjoining ours." "Oh!" was all Jean said, but the monosyllable was most expressive. Farr laughed light-heartedly. He had been wrought up by this opening of a long-closed chapter in his life, and it was a relief to have the tension relaxed. "I have never for one instant regretted it, and certainly now----" "You haven't finished your story," Jean interrupted with but scant courtesy, "please go on."