Patricia's impressionable temperament was saved by Juma's advent from the sirocco of dulness that wafted her sisters over the lake of years. His "ole Miss," a looker on at the "Court of Florizel," had unconsciously taught him to imbibe the atmosphere surrounding the Graces. A democracy could not spoil her elegance, for Chesterfield's warning was ever before her eyes. She who copied the footsteps of Baccelli, adored her Sterne and Beattie, and though her eyes grew dim, never let romance pass her window unmolested, had left her impress upon the mind of the faithful servitor. Life to him was a gay-colored picture-book, brighter perhaps because he could not read the printed page. All his maids were cherry-ribboned and belaced; all his roystering sparks clinked gilded canakins. Love was ever smiling on them! For wellnigh half a century he had listened to tales of the gay god as he bound one romance-loving woman's silken tresses. Small wonder that he thought the urchin ruled the world! * * * * * When the bells rested their brassy throats for the first time that night, and Jonathan Knickerbocker could take up his West Indies accounts undisturbed, giving his daughters freedom to doze in peace, "Miss Patsy" stole on tiptoe from the room. She wanted to be alone. Juma, ambling through the dim hall to his pantry, caught sight of her fluttering garments, but did not speak. Only an hour or two before, he had placed in the chamber where she slept a bunch of arbutus which young Sheridan, the organist, had given into his keeping. The wild, sweet-scented flower grew in but one spot near the town--an island in the centre of the Woodbridge Swamp, where Captain Kidd in a freak of fancy had planted it over the body of a comrade, tradition said, and no one ever disputed the story. To reach it, even the most sure-footed ran the danger of being caught in the bog. Patricia wondered as she mounted the stairs how her lover had been able to come with her gift unseen. The watching negro smiled sadly and shook his head when the last bit of her garment disappeared over the staircase like a white moth moving treeward. Oh, how terrible it was never to see him in her father's house! Never to have seen him alone, only that one time, after twilight service, when she had stolen a meeting at the Battery, while her family were taking their Sabbath-day ride up the Bowery Road!