Then Judith's laugh rang clearly. "My dear Ridley! You are amusing!... Yes, that clever boy is scheming to take Edward's money, and I am helping him to it! Either that, or he is in love with me and I am forgetting that I am thirty-four and he twenty-six--a little romance snatched at in my old age!" She rippled into more subdued mirth as she rose. "You go on in and talk to Edward--he'll give you the best of reasons for _our_ countenancing Mr. Baird." She changed then suddenly to sternness. "I'd advise you, though, not to make any such remarks to him as you've just made to me, Cousin Ridley. Edward is head of our family, remember, and you're more Westmore than Dickenson--at least I've always thought so. I'm certainly Westmore enough to set the family interest before everything else--I've always done so in the past, and am likely to do so in the future." The colonel had been entertaining a jumble of thoughts, among others, that women of thirty-four were sometimes emotionally erratic, particularly if they had had so barren an emotional existence as Judith; and also, that young fellows of twenty-six were apt to be dangerously impressionable. But at Judith's reproof he came up standing: "I beg your pardon, Cousin Judith," he said, in his old-fashioned, florid manner. "Edward's hospitality has been a little too much fo' me--my tongue has run a little too loose. That happens to me sometimes, as you know. I beg yo' pardon. What I really think is that you are a woman in a million, Judith--a very splendid woman, my dear. Westmo' owes everything to you--we all know that, and I'm on my knees to you--I always have been." Judith Westmore was not demonstrative, so her answer to his apology surprised and vastly pleased the colonel. She framed his tanned face with her hands and kissed his cheek. "You are a dear," she said brightly. "Now go in to Edward and be nice to him. He's worried over Garvin--and a number of things.... I'm going in now to talk to Cousin Mary, and after that I'll have to go up-stairs. If any one wants to see me, just say I'm busy." The colonel did as he was bidden; Judith was usually obeyed. She had her own methods with each member of the clan, and it was a rare thing for one of them to venture upon criticism of Judith. The colonel had been, as he said, a little overcome by Edward's hospitality. IX A FEMININE PROCEDURE But Judith did not go up-stairs. After nearly an hour spent in the drawing-room, she left her elder cousins engrossed in whist, saying that she was going up until time for supper. She went to the foot of the stairs, then half-way up, to where the stairs made a turn, and stood for a time, listening. Everything was quiet above. In the dining-room the men were still talking, and the drawing-room was silent except for an occasional remark. Smothered by the intervening walls, the music and the stir in the ballroom seemed distant.