Three days later Cis received an invitation from Miss Gallatin to dine and spend the evening with her. Rodney had told his eccentric, but fine landlady of his engagement and speedy marriage. In default of relatives on either side Miss Hannah Gallatin felt it incumbent upon her to do something as a mild celebration of what had happened, the more that she had doubted Rodney, and, for lack of anything else upon which to hang that doubt, had feared that he was playing with Cis, would never marry her. Besides this, with the ardor of her own strong, and comparatively recent adherence to the Catholic Church, she was anxious about Cicely’s marriage to a renegade from it, Cicely, whose own lukewarmness was only too evident. Miss Gallatin was not an ordinary boarding house keeper; queer as she was in appearance, uncouth and almost shabby in attire, she had come of good stock; her youth had passed in refined, even luxurious surroundings; she was well-read, clever, was what used to be meant by “a gentlewoman.” She was dependent upon her own exertions for a livelihood because her patrimony had passed from her wholly into a brother’s hands, owing to her father’s conviction that nothing of his must ever be administered by one who would be likely to use its smallest fraction to benefit that menace to American institutions, the Roman Catholic Church. Miss Gallatin did not invite Cicely to dine at the common table; it was not covenable to expose a young girl to criticism among her lover’s fellow-boarders; she was so far from being their concern that they were sure to watch her closely and later to comment on her violently. A small table was spread in a cozy room near the general dining room and in it Cicely and Rodney were to dine with their hostess, and a gentleman whom Miss Gallatin explained to Cicely in private.