She spoke passionately in earnest, with such depth of feeling that she did not realize her son was not giving her the promise when he said abruptly, the somewhat hard blue eyes looking straight into hers: "Mother, why are you so hard on Aunt Meda? She's a stingy old screw, I know, and led Uncle Louis round by the nose, so everybody says; but why are you so down on her?" He was insistent, and his insistence was the one trait in his character which his mother had found hardest to deal with from his babyhood; from it, however, if it should develop happily into perseverance, she hoped the most. This trait he inherited from his father, Warren Googe, but in the latter it had deteriorated into obstinacy. She always feared for her self-control when she met it in her son, and just now she was under the influence of a powerful emotion that helped her to lose it. "Because," she made answer, again passionately but the earnestness had given place to anger, "I am a woman and have borne from her what no woman bears and forgets, or forgives! Are you any the wiser now?" she demanded. "It is all that I shall tell you; so don't insist." The two continued to look into each other's eyes, and something, it could hardly be called inimical, rather an aloofness from the tie of blood, was visible to each in the other's steadfast gaze. Aurora Googe shivered. Her eyes fell before the younger ones. "Don't Champney! Don't let's get upon this subject again; I can't bear it." "But, mother," he protested, "you mentioned it first." "It was what you said about Almeda's furnishing you with money that started it. Don't say anything more about it; only promise me, won't you?" She raised her eyes again to his, but this time in appeal. At forty-one Aurora Googe was still a very beautiful woman, and her appeal, made gently as if in apology for her former vehemence, rendered that beauty potent with her son's manhood. "Let me think it over, mother, before I promise." He answered her as gently. "It's a hard thing to exact of a man, and I don't hold much with promises. What did Uncle Louis' amount to?" The blood surged into his mother's face, and tears, rare ones, for she was not a weak woman neither was she a sentimental one, filled her eyes. Her son came up the steps and kissed her. They were seldom demonstrative to this extent save in his home-comings and leave-takings. He changed the subject abruptly. "I'm going down to the village now. You know I have the serenade on my program, at eight. Afterwards I'll run down to The Greenbush for the mail and to see my old cronies. I haven't had a chance yet." He began to whistle for the puppy, but cut himself short, laughing. "I was going to take Rag, but he won't fit in with the serenade. Keep him tied up while I'm gone, please. Anything you want from the village, mother?" "No, not to-night."