Could Acton possibly have said anything definite to start this unusual train of thought, the grandmother speculated. With Leslie so felicitously married, she would have felt ready for her _nunc dimittis_. She watched Leslie expectantly. But the girl was apparently dreaming, and was staring absently at the tip of one sturdy oxford above which a stretch of thick white woollen stocking was visible almost to her knee. "How can they fall in love with them, dressed like Welsh peasants!" the grandmother said to herself, in mild disapproval. And aloud she said: "Ah, don't, lovey!" For Leslie had taken out a small gold case, and was regarding it thoughtfully. "My first to-day, on my honour!" Leslie said, as she lazily lighted a sweet-scented cigarette. It never occurred to her to pay any attention to her grandmother's protest, for Grandmother had been regularly protesting against everything Leslie had done since her adored and despotic childhood. She had fainted when Leslie had dived off the dock at Newport, and had wept when Leslie had galloped through the big iron gates on her own roan stallion; she had called in Christopher, as Leslie's guardian, when Leslie, at fifteen, had calmly climbed into one of the big cars, and driven it seven miles, alone and unadvised, and totally without instruction or experience. Leslie knew that this half-scandalized and wholly-admiring opposition was one of her grandmother's secret satisfactions, and she combatted it only mechanically. "Have one, Grandma?" "Have one--you wild girl you! I'd like to know what a nice young man thinks when a refined girl offers him----" "All the nice young men are smoking themselves, like chimneys!" "Ah, but that's a very different thing. No, my dear, no man, whether he smokes himself or not, likes to have a sweet, womanly girl descend----" "Darling, didn't you ever do anything that my revered great-grandmother Murison disapproved of?" Leslie teased, dropping on her knees before her grandmother, and resting her arms on her lap. "Smoke----! My mother would have fainted," said Mrs. Melrose. "And don't blow that nasty-smelling stuff in my face!" But she could not resist the pleasure that the lovely young face, so near her own, gave her, and she patted it with her soft, wrinkled hand. Suddenly Leslie jumped up eagerly, listening to the sound of voices in the hall. "There's Aunt Annie--oh, goody! I wanted to ask her----" But it was Regina who opened the door, showing in two callers. The first was a splendid-looking woman of perhaps forty-five, with a rosy, cheerful face, and wide, shrewd gray eyes shining under a somewhat shabby mourning veil. With her was a pretty girl of eighteen, or perhaps a little more.