Mrs. Trennahan had sold her father's place, and bought a superb estate in the foothills, where she entertained in the simple fashion of the Eighties. Trennahan still took the haughty spirit of his chosen borough with all his old humor, but he liked no place so well, even in California. A New-Yorker is always a New-Yorker, however long he may live in California, but he becomes more and more attached to the independent life, the even climate, above all to the cooking; and Trennahan was no exception. He had found Magdalena the most comfortable of companions, she had presented him with two fine boys--who were preparing for college, at present--and a lovely daughter; and he was, in a leisurely way, collecting earthquake data, for future publication, and amused himself with a seismograph; which worried Magdalena, who thought the instrument much too intimate with earthquakes to be a safe piece of household furniture. Gwynne liked them both as well as any people he had met in California, and engaged the beautiful Inez--who would seem to have embodied all her mother's old passionate longing for physical loveliness--to dance several times with him at the great ball which was to be the medium of her introduction to society. "I am still old-fashioned," Mrs. Trennahan confided to Gwynne, with a sigh. "I never have liked new people and I never shall; Mr. Trennahan has not laughed it out of me. But what will you? They are seven-eighths strong in San Francisco, I have a daughter who naturally demands the rights of her youth--so I make the best of a bad bargain. But I protest." When Gwynne arrived at the house on Russian Hill late in the evening it occurred to him to tap on Isabel's door and tell her that he had obeyed her orders, recalled all the traditions down in their common ancestor's old domain, and "got the feel" of the place. He had never crossed the threshold of this room although he had brushed his hair many times in the spotless bower by the marsh, and he was surprised, after a moment's colloquy through the panels, by an invitation to enter. He was still more surprised to find Isabel sitting before her dressing-table in full regalia, although they were not to start for the party until eleven o'clock. She wore the white tulle gown with the dark-blue lilies in which she had created a sensation at Arcot, and looked more radiant than he had ever seen her. Her eyes were like stars, her cheeks were pink; her red lips were parted, the upper trembling with excitement. "Come! Look!" she cried. "See what your mother has given me. I had to dress at once to see the whole effect." She lifted and fingered rapturously a row of splendid pearls that lay on her neck.