We talk of the daughters of a hundred earls. I have seen them, too. God save me from them! Give me this daughter of Kansas City, whose blood runs red. No proud anæmia pales her cheek. She can boast a family as old as the Fitznits, a hundred generations of men and women, rugged folk with good digestions and little else. They left her no crest. She had to adopt one. But from them came the most perfect face and form in all the town--the red-gold hair that frames that perfect face; the round, dimpled cheeks from which the color never goes, but plays now deeper, now softer, like the sunlight on the clouds; those glorious blue eyes with the quiet gleam lurking in their depths; that mouth that says so little in words and yet speaks volumes; the foot, the hand--they would seem the heritage of the storied daughters of the storied nobles. She glided down the aisle that day, so quietly proud, so proudly quiet, that I doubt if in all that church, filled to suffocation with the smartest of the town, there came to one soul the thought that her grandfather was--But why think of it? As Mrs. Radigan says, money covers a multitude of ancestors. CHAPTER XXIV _Mrs. Radigan Being Smart, Becomes Clever_ One week more and I shall be married. It used to be said that there were three great events in a woman's life--birth, marriage, and death--and I take it that the same is true of man. But under our improved social system we are not quite so restricted. As Mrs. Radigan remarked the other afternoon, there are now a number of great events--birth, marriages, and death--but I fear she becomes more cynical as she grows smarter. I will not take such a view, and when she expressed it, I put down my foot hard, and looking fiercely at Pearl Veal, said that I wanted it understood then and there that after next Tuesday she had nothing to look forward to but death. She was very good about it, and smilingly replied that she agreed with me very thoroughly. Pearl is so different from her sister. Mrs. Radigan has become very broad and says that nothing keeps her with John but her affection for him, and his dog-like admiration for her. She has become brilliant and is writing a book, a satire on society, I believe, so has begun to surround herself with what she calls clever people, whom she patronizes. He has not changed. He knows nothing of "atmosphere" or of "color," has no imagination, and cannot rise above stocks, carbureters, and glanders. His wife loves him, but pities him. She says that their tastes are utterly different, that he is dull and worldly, and thinks this beautiful earth of ours nothing more than a mint, and life simply a job. He yawns when she talks to him about the "soul" and the "music of things," so they never have common ground to meet on except when they go over the household-bills.