The invitation had its notable social side, too. There was no good in blinking the fact that his father the General--who had effected a somewhat noisy entrance to the house a half-hour ago, and the sound of whose burdened breathing now intermittently came to his ears in the silence of the night--had allowed the family status to lapse. The Boyces were not what they had been. In the course of such few calls as he had made since his return, it had been impossible for him not to detect the existence of a certain surprise that he should have called at all. Everybody, too, had taken pains to avoid reference to his father, even when the course of talk made such allusion natural. This had for the moment angered the young man, and later had not a little discouraged him. As a boy he had felt it a great thing to be the son of a general, and to find it now to be a distinct detriment was disheartening indeed. But this black-bordered, perfumed note from Mrs. Minster put all, as by the sweep of a hand, into the background. Once he visited that proud household as a friend, once he looked Thessaly in the face as the confidential adviser of the Minster family, the Boyces were rehabilitated. To dwell upon the thought was very pleasant, for it led the way by sweetly vagrant paths to dreams of the dark-eyed, beautiful Kate. During the past month these visions had lost color and form under the disconcerting influences just spoken of, but now they became, as if by magic, all rosy-hued and definite again. He had planned to himself on that first November day a career which should be crowned by marriage with the lovely daughter of the millions, and had made a mental march around the walls encompassing her to spy out their least defended point. Now, all at once, marvellous as it seemed, he found himself transported within the battlements. He was to be her mother’s lawyer--nay, _her_ lawyer as well, and to his sanguine fancy this meant everything.