She held out to him a box of the best cigars, which she had bought against his coming, for she had remembered Joe Ellison's once fastidious taste regarding tobacco. He lit one, and they fell into the easy silence of old friends, taking up their friendship exactly where it had been broken off. As a matter of fact, Joe Ellison might have been her son-in-law but for her own firm attitude. He had known her daughter very much better than her words to Larry the previous evening had indicated. Not only had Joe known her while a girl down here, but much later he had learned in what convent she was going to school and there had been surreptitious love-making despite convent rules and boundaries--till the Duchess had learned what was going on. She had had a square out-and-out talk with Joe; the romance had suddenly ended; and later Larry's mother had married elsewhere. But the snuffed-out romance had made no difference in the friendship between the Duchess and Joe; each had recognized the other as square, as that word was understood in their border world. To Joe Ellison the Duchess was changed but little since twenty-odd years ago. She had seemed old even then; though as a youth he had known old men who had talked of her beauty when a young woman and of how she had queened it among the reckless spirits of that far time. But to the Duchess the change in Joe Ellison was astounding. She had last seen him in his middle thirties: black-haired, handsome, careful of dress, powerful of physique, dominant, fiery-tempered, fearless of any living thing, but with these hot qualities checked into a surface appearance of unruffled equanimity by his self-control and his habitual reticence. And now to see him thin, white-haired, bent, his old fire seemingly burned to gray ashes--the Duchess, who had seen much in her generations, was almost appalled at the transformation. At first the Duchess skillfully guided the talk among commonplaces. “Larry tells me you're out with him.” “Yes,” said Joe. “Larry's been a mighty good pal.” “What're you going to do when you get back your strength?” “The same as I'm doing now--if they'll let me.” And after a pause: “Perhaps later, if I had the necessary capital, I'd like to start a little nursery. Or else grow flowers for the market.” “Not going back to the old thing, then?” Joe shook his white head. “I'm all through there. Flowers are a more interesting proposition.” “Whenever you get ready to start, Joe, you can have all the capital you want from me. And it will cost you nothing. Or if you'd rather pay, it'll cost you the same as at a bank--six per cent.” “Thanks. I'll remember.” Joe Ellison could not have spoken his gratitude more strongly. The Duchess now carefully guided the talk in the direction of the thing of which she had thought so constantly. “By the way, Joe, Larry told me something about you I'd never heard before--that you had been married, and had a child.”