"It is beautiful, isn't it?" Smooth as velvet her voice, warm, subtle, alluring as the country that gave her birth. "I love it--_how_ I love it! Even though I am not of the Scotch blood, yet have I that birthright of my nation--home-love. Maud, dear, take Mr. Deland round, won't you? I have still some matters to arrange with your father, so you must do the honours in my stead. And when Sir Andrew and I have finished with our little _personal_ matters"--she smiled suddenly, showing a flash of snowy teeth between the warm red lips which Time had not yet cooled to the more even tenor of England's blood--"then we will join you upon the terrace. And be sure and show Mr. Deland the electric-lighting plant, dear. He will be interested." Maud Duggan flashed her a look of absolute hatred at this, for she saw the darkening shade upon her father's face, and noted the sudden clenching of the hand upon his stick. "Cursed modernism and all its extravagant ways!" said the old gentleman in a bitter voice. "Spending that which he should have saved, sir, upon a ridiculous experiment which has ruined the atmosphere of the place entirely. Wayward fool!" "But it has improved your reading faculties, anyhow, Father," put in Miss Duggan in a quiet, resolute voice. "Paula is not nearly so busy nowadays, when you can read your own papers----" "As though I _ever_ wanted to do anything but wait upon him--dear man!" struck in Lady Paula reproachfully, and with an arch glance at Cleek which did not go unrewarded. "Your father is not so old a man as to be in his dotage. And if there _is_ twenty years between us, Maud, it is hardly kind of you to bring the matter up like this. Perfect love should have no age nor yet youth. It should be as ageless as Eternity, as boundless as the sea, as high as Heaven itself.... Are you ready, Andrew dear?" She bent toward the flattered and fluttered old man with that something in her gesture which has been the gift of every woman of her type all down the long ages since Scylla tempted Ulysses and Charybdis sent his head whirling with her lure. Maud Duggan led Cleek from the room at that, and once out of earshot of this ill-assorted pair, whirled round upon him, a spot of anger showing in each cheek. "You see, Mr. Deland, you see?" she rapped out excitedly, "how she misleads everything we say, and turns it all to her own ends? Oh, how I hate her--hate her! and have done so ever since she first set foot in this dear old home of ours. And Father--did you notice how worn and ill he looks? How his hand shakes so that he cannot steady it? Three months ago his hand was like a rock; his colour was as healthy as yours or mine. And yet your Mr. Narkom would say that a woman's intuition leads to nothing but her own foolish imaginings!"