"Whose is this?" she said, opening the stitched and folded sheets of her father's ledger. "_Mine_," said Val, laying determined hands on the folio. "I perceive part of it to be unmistakably yours," said Mrs. Gano, with a cutting inflection: "'_Vale_, a ballad sung at the Grand Opera House by the world-renowned diva, Signorita Val Gano.'" Val's hands had dropped from the paper as if paralyzed. "Now, this verse-stringing is one of the things I will _not_ have," said the old woman, with a curious tragic intensity. "I've seen enough of young girls ruining their figures, and their eyesight, and their prospects, bending over stuff like this, till it becomes a craze, and they're fit for nothing better." She took the _Comet_ in her hands and tried to tear it up. The ancient paper would have held out well against less fragile fingers, but Ethan did not realize the toughness of the Calvert ledger. He hurried forward. "Oh, don't tear it. Really, really, a little scribbling isn't so fatal." "I don't expect you to think so, my dear Ethan, when you do it yourself in two languages, having nothing better to do in either. But if I'm any judge, we've had enough of it in _this_ family." She turned upon the hushed, awed Emmie. "_Go out and play_," she commanded, but with an air of saying, "Off with your head! So much for Buckingham." "As for _you_"--she flashed back a look at Val as she went towards the fireplace--"never let me find you wasting your youth in this pernicious fashion again as long as you live under _my_ roof." She put the _Comet_ in the fire, and with the poker she pushed it down among the red-hot coals. She waited grimly while it burned, then, without another word or look, she went back to the long room. Ethan had been perilously near laughing at the total rout of the two malefactors. No sooner had the guardian of the family virtue disappeared, and it was possible openly to relieve one's feelings, than Val began striding back and forth with clinched hands and a look of concentrated rage. He was rather startled at the transformation in the sunny face. It was convulsed, ugly with passion. "I won't stand it; no, I wouldn't stand it from the Angel Gabriel!" She took a turn up and down the room and burst out afresh: "_She_, Pallas Athene! She, patron of the arts! It's this sort of thing"--she stopped before her cousin with tragic eyes--"it's this sort of thing that has embittered my youth!" "What!" he said, holding fast to his gravity. "Has she done this before?" Val shook her head, and then, in a stifled voice: "The _Comet_ has been kept dark, but there are other things--things I really care about." "Is there something you care about more than about writing?"