“Good! It will be quite an event--going back to your old home to receive the laurel! I hope your work will stand for centuries!” “Thank you, sir; good-night.” CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO I Brief notes from Leila announced the happy course of her honeymoon in the New England hills. She wrote to her father as though there had been nothing extraordinary in her flight. Mills’s mortification that his daughter should have married over his protest was ameliorated by the satisfaction derived from dealing magnanimously with her. The Mills dignity required that she have a home in keeping with the family status, and he would provide for this a sum equal to the amount he had given Shep to establish himself. He avoided Shep and Connie--the latter misguidedly bent upon trying to reconcile him to the idea that Leila had not done so badly. He suspected that Connie, in her heart, was laughing at him, rejoicing that Leila had beaten him. He saw Millicent occasionally; but for all her tact and an evident wish to be kind, he suspected that her friendliness merely expressed her sympathy, and sympathy from any quarter was unbearable. He felt age clutching at him; he questioned whether Millicent could ever care for him; his dream of marrying again had been sheer folly. The summer wore on monotonously. Mills showed himself at the country club occasionally, usually at the behest of some of his old friends, and several times he entertained at Deer Trail. Shep and Connie were to dine with him in the town house one evening, and when he had dressed he went, as he often did, into Leila’s room. He sat down and idly drew the books from a rack on the table. One of them was a slender volume of George Whitford’s poems, printed privately and inscribed, “To Leila, from her friend, the author.” Mills had not heard of the publication and he turned over the leaves with more curiosity than he usually manifested in volumes of verse. Whitford’s lyrics were chiefly in a romantic and sentimental vein. One of them, the longest in the book, was called “The Flower of the World,” and above the title Leila had scrawled “Connie.” The lines were an ardent tribute to a lady whom the poet declared to be his soul’s ideal. Certain phrases underscored by Leila’s impious pencil were, when taken collectively, a very fair description of Constance. Mills carried the book to the library for a more deliberate perusal. If Leila knew that Constance was the subject of the verses, others must know it. What his sister had said about Whitford’s devotion to Constance was corroborated by the verses; and there had been that joint appearance of Constance and Whitford in the dramatic club play--another damning circumstance. Mills’s ire was aroused. He was standing in the middle of the room searching for other passages that might be interpreted as the author’s tribute to Constance when Shep entered.