CALEB TRENCH [Illustration] CALEB TRENCH BY MARY IMLAY TAYLOR AUTHOR OF “THE REAPING,” “THE IMPERSONATOR,” ETC. WITH FRONTISPIECE BY EMLEN McCONNELL BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1910 _Copyright, 1910_, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved_ Published March, 1910 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. CALEB TRENCH CALEB TRENCH I DIANA ROYALL pushed back the music-rack and rose from her seat at the piano. “Show the person in here, Kingdom.” The negro disappeared, and Diana moved slowly to the table at the farther end of the long room, and stood there turning over some papers in her leisurely, graceful way. “Who in the world is it now?” Mrs. Eaton asked, looking up from her solitaire, “a book agent?” “Caleb Trench,” Diana replied carelessly, “the shopkeeper at Eshcol.” “The storekeeper?” Mrs. Eaton looked as if Diana had said the chimney-sweep. “What in the world does he want of you, my dear?” Diana laughed. “How should I know?” she retorted, with a slight scornful elevation of her brows; “we always pay cash there.” “I wonder that you receive him in the drawing-room,” Mrs. Eaton remonstrated, shuffling her cards with delicate, much be-ringed fingers, and that indefinable manner which lingers with some old ladies, like their fine old lace and their ancestors, and is at once a definition and classification. Thus, one could see, at a glance, that Mrs. Eaton had been a belle before the war, for, as we all know, the atmosphere of belledom is as difficult to dissipate and forget as the poignant aroma of a moth-ball in an old fur coat, though neither of them may have served the purposes of preservation.