"He knew her before, but if Helen Northrup had been all she should have been to him----" "I begin to see. And then?" "Well, then he died and proved how noble he was at heart. When he went off, Helen Northrup wouldn't take a cent. She had a little of her own and she went to work and Brace helped when he grew older--and then when Thomas Northrup died he left almost all his fortune to his wife. He never considered her anything else. I call his a really great nature." Poor Anna was in a trembling and ecstatic state. "I call him a--just what he was!" Kathryn was weary of the subject. "I think Brace's mother was a fool to let him off so easy. I would have bled him well rather than to let the other woman put it all over me." "My dear, that's not a proper way for you to talk!" Aunt Anna became the chaperon. "Come, get dressed now, dearie. There's the luncheon, you know." "What luncheon?" "Why, with Mr. Arnold, my dear, and he included me, too! Such a sweet fellow he is, and so wise and thoughtful." "Oh!" There had been a time when she and Sandy Arnold met clandestinely--it was such fun! He included Aunt Anna now. Why? And just then, as if it were a live and demanding thing, her eyes fell on Northrup's last book. She scowled at it. It was a horrible book. All about dirty, smudgy people that you couldn't forget and who kept springing out on you in the most unexpected places. At dinners and luncheons they often wedged in with their awful eyes fixed on your plate and made you choke. They probably were not true. And those things Brace said! Besides, if they were true, people like that were used to them--they had never known anything else! And then Brace had said some terrible things about war; that war going on over the sea. Of course, no one expected to have a war, but it was unpatriotic for any one to say what Brace had about those perfectly dear officers at West Point and--what was it he said?--oh, yes--having the blood of the young on one's soul and settling horrid things, like money and land, with lives. At this Kathryn tossed the book aside and it fell at Anna's feet. She picked it up and handled it as if it were a tender baby that had bumped its nose. "It must be perfectly wonderful," she said, smoothing the book, "to have an autographed copy of a novel. It's like having a lock of someone's hair. Where _is_ Brace, Kathryn?" This was unfortunate. "That is my business and his!" Kathryn spoke slowly. Her eyes slanted and her lips hardened. "My darling, I beg your pardon!" And once more Anna Morris was shoved into the groove where she belonged. Later that day, after the luncheon with Sandy--Anna had been eliminated by a master stroke that reduced her to tears and left Sandy a victim to Kathryn's wiles--Kathryn called upon Helen Northrup.