Thomas chuckled gleefully as he showed his new red-and-gold party livery to the company below stairs. He knew that he was a very handsome nigger, and many a lady's maid would smile at him as she followed her mistress through the hall when the ball commenced. None of the ladies appeared at breakfast, and after the last dish was removed Doctor Moore asked Nathaniel to follow him to the office. "Nathaniel," the father said, motioning his son to a seat, "your mother saw your conduct in the garden last night with Miss Conover, and I wish to know its meaning." The young man had refused to be seated, and stood by one of the windows gazing out into the mist. The grayness filled him with a vague intimation of approaching trouble. Ellen's name was its first sense of realization. "I love Miss Conover," he answered, almost unconsciously. The old physician in the stiff-backed desk-chair knit his brow and pulled his stock up higher about his throat, an action familiar to his patients. He seemed lost in thought. In front of him was his desk covered with medicine phials, but here was a case that no medicine he could give would help. "My son," he said, and the clock accentuated the huskiness of his voice. "My son, you have no right to love Miss Conover. She is your first cousin, and you can never marry her. It is a hopeless love." "Other men have married their cousins, sir. There are Jonathan Kortright and Hulda Reid, and Chauncey Prince----" "Yes, Nathaniel," the doctor's voice interrupted his passionate speech, "the world is full of law-breakers; but it is the edict of God that two of one flesh cannot marry. I should never countenance such a union. Your children would be accursed." The glowing eyes of the young man were riveted on those older eyes drooping beneath the gray wig. Why didn't he storm and rage as he used to in the old days when a lad in torn nankeens and begrimed face was brought to that desk like a culprit before a tribunal of justice? He could see that his father pitied him. In the next room they were tacking up the wall decorations for the ball, and a monotonous tap, tap was joined to the maddening ticking of the clock. Suddenly the youth rose to his full height before the old man and caught his weary eyes. "I shall marry her," he said. "I defy you, God, or the devil to stop me!" The wrinkled, passive face before him seemed dazed and blurred. There was no answer. Oh, how cold and dreary the room looked! Life, after all, held very little. The fire died out in the youth's eyes. "My God, what a hell you have given me!" he cried. There was a knock at the door and the father rose to open it. In the middle of the floor he stopped and went up to his son. Upon the strong young arms he placed his feeble hands. "Be a brave man, my son," he said. "May God help you!"