It was on a cool, cloudy day in early September that Mr. and Mrs. Burke Denby arrived at Dalton from their wedding trip. With characteristic inclination to avoid anything unpleasant, the young husband had neglected to tell his wife that they were not to live in the Denby Mansion. He had argued with himself that she would find it out soon enough, anyway, and that there was no reason why he should spoil their wedding trip with disagreeable topics of conversation. Burke always liked to put off disagreeable things till the last. Helen was aware, it is true, that Burke's father was much displeased at the marriage; but that this displeasure had gone so far as to result in banishment from the home, she did not know. She had been planning, indeed, just how she would win her father-in-law over--just how sweet and lovely and daughterly she would be, as a member of the Denby household; and so sure was she of victory that already she counted the battle half won. In the old days of her happy girlhood, Helen Barnet had taken as a matter of course the succumbing of everything and everybody to her charm and beauty. And although this feeling had, perforce, been in abeyance for some eighteen months, it had been very rapidly coming back to her during the past two weeks, under the devoted homage of her young husband and the admiring eyes of numberless strangers along their honeymoon way. It was a complete and disagreeable surprise to her now, therefore, when Burke said to her, a trifle nervously, as they were nearing Dalton:-- "We'll have to go to a hotel, of course, Helen, for a few days, till we get the apartment ready. But 'twon't be for long, dear." "Hotel! Apartment! Why, Burke, aren't we going home--to _your_ home?" "Oh, no, dear. We're going to have a home of our own, you know--_our_ home." "No, I didn't know." Helen's lips showed a decided pout. "But you'll like it, dear. You just wait and see." The man spoke with determined cheeriness. "But I can't like it better than your old home, Burke. I _know_ what that is, and I'd much rather go there." "Yes, yes, but--" Young Denby paused to wet his dry lips. "Er--you know, dear, dad wasn't exactly--er--pleased with the marriage, anyway, and--" "That's just it," broke in the bride eagerly. "That's one reason I wanted to go there--to show him, you know. Why, Burke, I'd got it all planned out lovely, how nice I was going to be to him--get his paper and slippers, and kiss him good-morning, and--" "Holy smoke! Kiss--" Just in time the fastidious son of a still more fastidious father pulled himself up; but to a more discerning bride, his face would already have finished his sentence. "Er--but--well, anyhow, dear," he stammered, "that's very kind of you, of course; but you see it's useless even to think of it. He--he has forbidden us to go there." "Why, the mean old thing!" "Helen!" Helen's face showed a frown as well as a pout. "I don't care. He is mean, if he is your father, not to let--" "Helen!"