It was the Alfred Carsons who came to her last; the young manager beaming with pleasure in the honour done him by his invitation to this family wedding, to which the great of the city were mostly intentionally unbidden; his pretty young wife, in effective modishness of attire by no means ill-chosen, glowing with pride and rosy with the effort to comport herself in keeping with the standards of these "democratically aristocratic" people, as her husband had shrewdly characterized them. As they stood talking with the bride, two of Richard's friends standing near by, former close associates in the life of the clubs he was now too busy to pursue, exchanged a brief colloquy which would mightily have interested the subject of it if he could have heard it. "Who are these?" demanded one of the other, gazing elsewhere as he spoke. "Partner or manager or something, in that business of Rich's up in Eastman. So Belden Lorimer says." "Bright looking chap--might be anybody, except for the wife. A bit too conscious, she." "You might not notice that except in contrast with the new Mrs. Kendrick. There's the real thing, yes? Rich knew what he was doing when he picked her out." "Undoubtedly he did. The whole family's pretty fine--not the usual sort. Watch Mrs. Clifford Cartwright. Even she's impressed. Odd, eh?--with all the country cousins about, too." "I know. It's in the air. And of course everybody knows the family blood is of the bluest. Unostentatious but sure of itself. The Cartwrights couldn't get that air, not in a thousand years." "Rich himself has it, though--and the grandfather." "True enough. I'm wondering which class we belong in!" The two laughed and moved closer. Neither could afford to miss a chance of observing their old friend under these new conditions, for he had been a subject of their speculations ever since the change in him had begun. And though they had deplored the loss of him from their favourite haunts, they had been some time since forced to admit that he had never been so well worth knowing as now that he was virtually lost to them. "Oh, Robby, darling--I can never, never let you go!" So softly wailed Ruth, her slim young form clinging to her sister's, regardless of her bridesmaid's crushed finery, daintily cherished till this moment. Over her head Roberta's eyes looked into her mother's. There were no tears in the fine eyes which met hers, but somehow Roberta knew that Ruth's heartache was a tiny pain beside that other's.