“Don’t interrupt me. You’ve no manners. . . . But you’re a Carteret all the same, in spite of your ridiculous airs and notions, and you look—could look—exactly as I did in my youth: I was your grandfather’s second cousin and a Carteret to my finger-tips—except that you are not tall enough. I was five-feet-eight and you must be quite three inches shorter. I was the beauty and the belle of my day, and that is more than you will ever be unless you take heed before it is too late.” The gray old voice, with its sudden moments of vehement life, trailed off and her gaze turned inward. The light from the open window shone on her face high on the pillows in the ancient four-post bed, and Gita looked at it with the cold appraisement of youth. Beautiful? Once, perhaps. The black eyes were still keen and bright, although sunken deep in sockets as yellow and crinkled as an old Asiatic’s. The bony ridge of the nose was high and thin, but the cheeks were seamed with a thousand little wrinkles and the mouth was a pale satiric line. She looked more like an old bird of prey than the remnants of a woman, and Gita decided it was not worth the mental effort to repad that face with firm young flesh and give it the pedestal of a swan-like neck or any of the other absurdities of archaic youth. She looked longingly through the window at the sunlight, but she had made up her mind to “do the decent thing” as the old lady had rescued her from poverty and heaven knew what not. Besides, she admitted grudgingly, blood was blood, and her grandmother had no one else. Noblesse oblige. Moreover, she rather liked this new-found relative, with her sharp, sarcastic, if superannuated, mind. If she had been affectionate life would have been unendurable once more. The old Carteret Manor was not far from the island covered by Atlantic City, and behind the Old Shore Road. It was surrounded on three sides by pine woods but open to the sea on the east. There had been a storm the night before and from this high window Gita could see the tossing spray that hid the horizon. She forgot her grandmother until the old lady spoke again. “They named you Gita, anyhow!” she said triumphantly. “The first daughter of every son was always named Gita, but it would have been like your father to break the tradition, especially as your mother disliked me. . . . There have been many Gita Carterets! And you are a Carteret through and through. Not a trace of your mother, thank heaven——” “I won’t hear a word against my mother! My mother was an angel and a martyr, and as for my father—I don’t care if he was your son——” “He was a scallywag. I’ll not deny it. Many of the Carteret men were. My sympathies were with your mother although I liked her as little as she liked me. She was no wife for Gerald—I told her so—but for that matter only a Carteret could handle a Carteret. Nevertheless, young lady, it behooves a child to speak of its parents with respect.” Miss Carteret gave an unladylike snort.