“Though lost to sight, to memory dear,” laughed Jacob, throwing back his sleek dark head, and blowing his cigarette smoke into rings before his face: he was still leaning against the piano, and his attitude displayed his well-knit, rather slight figure. His mother, gazing at him with an admiration not unlike the devotion the heathen extends to his favorite deity, regarded him as a supreme expression of the best in manhood and wisdom. To her Jacob was little short of a divinity and nothing short of a tyrant, under whose despotic rule she had trembled since he was first able to express himself in the cryptic language of the cradle, which had meant with him an unqualified and unrestrained shriek for everything he wanted. She thought he showed to peculiar advantage, too, in the setting of the old room with its two centers of light, the lamp on the table and the fire on the hearth, with the well-worn Turkey rugs, its darkly polished floor, the rare pieces of Chippendale, and the equally rare old paintings on the walls. There was a fine, richly toned portrait of Colonel Royall’s grandfather, who had been with Washington at Yorktown, and there was a Corot and a Van Dyke, originals that had cost the colonel’s father a small fortune in his time. Best of all, perhaps, was the Greuze, for there was something in the shadowy beauty of the head which suggested Diana. Colonel Royall himself had apparently forgotten Jacob and his attitude. The old man was gazing absently into the fire, and the latent tenderness in his expression, the fine droop of eyes and lips seemed to suggest some deeper current of thought which the light talk stirred and brought to the surface. There was a reminiscent sadness in his glance which ignored the present and warned his daughter of the shoals. She leaned forward and held her hands out to the blaze. “If it’s fine next week, I’m going up to Angel Pass to see if the anemones are not all in bloom,” she said abruptly. Colonel Royall rose, and walking to the window, drew aside the heavy curtains and looked out. “The night is superb,” he said. “Come here, Di, and see Orion’s golden sword. If it is like this, we will go to-morrow.” But Diana, going to him, laid a gentle hand on his arm. “To-morrow was mother’s birthday, pa,” she said softly. Mrs. Eaton looked up and caught her son’s eye, and turned her face carefully from the two in the bay window. “Think of it,” she murmured, with a look of horrified disapproval, “think of keeping Letty’s birthday here!” But Jacob, glancing at Diana’s unconscious back, signed to her to be silent. II