“Certainly not! I--I had no such thought. I merely noticed--I have some very good things myself, but nothing quite of that order, and I always admire----” It was a surprise to have the great lady speak so jerkily and hurriedly, but it did not carry the amazement to Glen Darrow that it would to the thousands who had heard Mrs. Eugenia Adams Parker on the platform. It was, nevertheless, a distinct disappointment. It would have been more satisfying to have her haughtier, more regal.... “I was talking of you with a mutual acquaintance, Miss Darrow, and-- May I sit down?--” She chose the armchair of Miss Ada’s own dear father as Glen nodded permission, “Miss Jennings, who is likewise staying at the Bella Vista. You were schoolmates, she tells me.” “For a brief period,” Glen disclaimed gentility. “Then I left Miss Josephine’s and went to public school.” “That was an excellent move, I feel sure,” Mrs. Parker approved. “I am a hearty supporter of the public schools, Miss Darrow, and feel that no normal child should be deprived of that fine, well-rounded, democratic training.” (“That,” Glen told herself, “is put in to show me she is not a snob, and that she’s not objecting to me because I’m poor!”) She was meeting Mrs. Parker’s eyes more steadily than Mrs. Parker was meeting hers, which proved that she was dominating the situation, though it was possible that the young idler’s mother was not unmindful of the charm of the room, and that she found something to warrant more than a passing glance in the girl herself. She spoke with painstaking enthusiasm of the beauty of the day and of the landscape, and regretted that this was her first visit further south than Baltimore, where she had conducted a convention several years earlier, of which Miss Darrow might have read, but it was disconcerting to Glen, to have the oppressor of the poor, the glutted tyrant whose heel was on the aching neck of the toilers, hesitating, and repeating and correcting herself. Glen began to feel very uncomfortable. She was not going to feel sorry for this thick-bodied, sternly corseted, gray dowager, that was certain, but it was equally certain that much of the zest would go out of the affair if Mrs. Parker, as seemed only too probable, should beg and plead instead of threaten. It would be a relief to get it over with. “You said you wished to see me on a matter of interest to us both, Mrs. Parker.” “Yes. Yes, I did, Miss Darrow.” Her voice steadied, but a slow and difficult red rose in her plain face. “It was, as you surmise, about my son.”