Theirs was one of the old houses in Mount Vernon Street--a traditional New England home for a substantial citizen. There was no ostentation about them--the carriage in which they drove forth was deliberately ancient in style and in appointments, looked modest even among the very modest or, if you choose, “badly turned out,” equipages of the Boston “aristocracy.” Mr. Allerton’s public expenditures--on an art gallery, in partial support of an orchestra and a hospital, in subscriptions to colleges, lectures, charities--were greater by thirty thousand a year than his private expenditures. Cecilia had few clothes, and, while they were of the very best, and were in good taste and style, they modestly asserted that in the Allerton conception of dress for a lady conspicuousness for inconspicuousness was the prime requirement. Mrs. Ridgie, who often complained that she “hated to live in a town where the best people didn’t wear their best clothes every day,” called Cecilia a “dowd”; but that was unjust, because Cecilia was most careful in her dress, and adapted it admirably to her peculiar charms. If Honoria had not forewarned Frothingham he would have been deceived by the modesty and frugality of the Allerton establishment. After New York, it seemed to him most un-American for people of great wealth to live thus obscurely. But, having been pointed by Honoria, he soon discovered that Allerton was indeed enormously rich. And he also discovered that he was favourably inclined to a titled son-in-law. But Cecilia---- “There’s some mystery about her,” he reflected. “She acts as if she were walking in her sleep. But if I could get her, I’d do even better than if I’d taken a wife from among those nervous New Yorkers. She’s meek and a stay-at-home. She’d not bother me a bit, and she and Evelyn would hit it off like twins. She’s not exactly stupid, but she’s something just as good. It doesn’t matter whether one’s wife is stupid or absent-minded--the effect’s the same.” But he walked round and round the fence between her personality and the world in vain. He found no low place, no place where he could slip under, no knot-hole or crack even. They went down to Brookline together--he was more puzzled than ever by her attitude toward him that morning. She was less friendly, but also less forbidding. She seemed to him to be awaiting something--he suspected what. He tried to muster courage to put his destiny to the touch when a chance naturally offered; but he could not--her expression was too strongly suggestive of a statue. Instead, he said: “What do you think about--away off there--wherever it is?” “Think?” She smiled peculiarly. “I don’t think--I feel.” “Feel what?” She looked mocking. “Ah--that’s my secret. You would stay where I do if you could go there and it made you as happy as it makes me.” “You’re mysterious,” he drawled. “I’m a block-head at riddles and all that.” But she did not assist him.