“Well, it’s this. I don’t like the old name to die out. None of my sons married except your father and William, who died without issue. The other two died young, one out yonder in the Thoroughfare, when he was fourteen. Three of the girls died in childhood during a diphtheria epidemic—my own Gita among them! Violet and Rose withered away in this house, unmarried; they were plain, and I would not countenance such suitors as they attracted. In the few plain Carteret women the Carteret spirit seemed also to be lacking. Evelyn had her full measure. She cut a great swath in New York, where my sister gave her a season, and then married to suit herself. But she died childless—long since. Now, you and I are the only Carterets left and unless you do as I ask the old name will be forgotten—like many another old name only to be found in some history of New Jersey.” “Well?” Gita’s crisp voice rose a key. “I should die content if you would promise me to ask—yes, insist, that your husband take our name——” “I’ll never marry! Never! Never!” Now Gita’s voice was harsh and defiant. “Fiddlesticks. All girls say that. I said it myself—and did not marry until I was twenty-seven. I was too fond of being a belle—I had more scalps at my belt than any girl of my time.” Again her gaze turned inward. “My father was one of the founders of Atlantic City—one of that group of far-sighted men that all Philadelphia laughed at—and put more than a penny in the old United States Hotel. Ah, what gay times we had! That old hotel was the scene of my triumphs, season after season. People of quality went to resorts in those days. Now they avoid them as they would the plague, if one may judge from the hordes on the Boardwalk. I used to be wheeled up and down in one of those chairs before I was bed-ridden . . . Nothing but tourists——” “Well, why not?” demanded Gita, who was growing restless. “It is a public walk and even tourists want to enjoy themselves, I suppose.” Mrs. Carteret, recalled, drew her scant brows together. “I am not talking of rights,” she said coldly. “I merely regret a time when the beach and even the Boardwalk was a promenade of fashion, of beautiful well-dressed women and handsome men. They were better to look at, and I happen to dislike common and undistinguished people. I hope you do not think yourself ‘democratic,’ among other things?” “Certainly I do. About the only decent treatment I’ve ever had has been from ‘common’ people—until we went to California, at all events. It was gentlemen, men of my father’s class, that made my mother’s life unendurable. And we hardly set up to be aristocrats on five cents a year.”