IX

My dear father used to maintain that true love seldom dies chiefly

because it is so seldom born, which I take to be an aspersion upon the

average love affair.

This would scarcely be fair to widows, or maidens who have been bereaved

before betrothal, would it? For, of course, it is conceivable that such

a one might in time recover from the shock of her loss and form a second

genuine attachment. But whether I was justified in putting Peaches into

the latter class or not I could not judge at the time. Because, of

course, we should have been extremely lonely on the northern ranch

without Mr. Markheim, especially after Richard, the chauffeur, enlisted,

and dear Mr. Pegg began his increasingly frequent trips to Washington,

where he had something to do with supplying the Army with fruit. The way

that man constantly ran over to Washington from California was simply

too--too--well, too Californian for words. For the natives of this

region save time in every conceivable fashion, yet regard distance as

nothing. He spent almost all of his time either there or in the southern

part of the State, where his principal groves of citrus fruit were

located.

At any rate we should have been tremendously lonely on the home ranch

without Mr. Markheim. Really I should not have supposed that a

millionaire could be so human or a _nouveau riche_ so condescending, or

rather, so tolerable. But I suppose his being in love with Alicia had

something to do with it, for before we had been twenty-four hours at the

King-Pin ranch I saw how things were.

On account of his name poor Mr. Markheim took no active part in the war,

though I understand that he lent somebody a great deal of money--the

Belgians or Irish or some one, I forget just who.

But at any rate he used to ride over to our place frequently every day

when it wasn't twice a day, and at first Peaches would have nothing to

do with him beyond mere politeness.

I settled myself to watch the progress of the affair, because I do love

a lover even when I don't like him, and I felt sorry for Mr. Markheim

and interested in his attentions to Peaches, though, of course, he was

of an age which would have rendered his devotion to an older woman far

more suitable, and I was confident that nothing could shake her fidelity

to the dear duke, that handsome and romantic rascal--that is, if he was

a rascal, which now seemed plain enough. But every woman loves a rascal

at some time or another, and though friends and family may succeed in

persuading her to give him up she goes on nursing her fondness in secret

just as long as the flavor lasts.

At any rate Peaches thought only of Sandro; that was plain to any woman,

and though she seldom spoke of him I could see that we never went to the

little dust bin of a town for the mail but she looked for a letter in

his handwriting. But she did not discuss him, even with me. And when Mr.

Sebastian came over from his toy ranch she would ride with him, talk

with him, swim in our pool with him or accept the little things he

bought her with a sweet, gentle acceptance which brought me to the

verge of tears, it was so unlike her old fiery self.

And thus we dragged through a long, long period which has nothing to do

with my account of our particular affairs--the period of the war, in

point of fact. I feel it is not incumbent upon me to make a record of

the war though it occurred at this time, inasmuch as several quite

competent persons, including Mr. Wilson and the Associated Press, have

covered the matter pretty carefully and quite as accurately as I should,

the more especially as I spent the entire span of the war in California,

and the Golden State was curiously removed from any sense of actual

warfare.

Not that I mean to say that we Californians were in any way lacking in

patriotism or that we failed to do our part, for goodness knows we just

about fed the entire nation, and prices didn't go up, either, the way

they did in the East. You could still buy at pre-war prices in 1918, and

we were so rich as a community that we could do without the scandalous

increases of which we read in our week-late New York Sunday newspapers.

But what I mean is that somehow war seemed to belong to the East rather

than to us. And I think we worried more over Mexico than over Flanders,

and who can blame us when we were so near to Mexico that we could

actually see what went on there? Or the result of what went on, at

least? And the European war was just like some horrid rather

unconvincing nightmare which the East had got itself into and that we

had in consequence to help her out of.

Peaches and I ran the home ranch, and hardly left it, after Richard's

enlistment. When I reflect upon our life there it seems punctuated by

two great events and nothing else, though at the time of living through

it I seemed to be in a continuous crisis, my upbringing crashing against

my environment.

The first momentous occurrence to which I have referred was news of the

duke. It came in a letter from Abby, who mentioned him casually in

passing. The Chinese cook had brought the mail up from Oroville and

Peaches and I had carried it outside to the edge of the swimming pool

which Mr. Pegg had built into an angle of the ranch house, a gaunt

white-painted frame building, very like a big New England farm-house, as

are many of the homesteads of northern California. It was a heavenly

mild late September day, with the barren hills turning faintly green

already, though the rains had been tardy and scarce, and the roses in

the garden had still to be irrigated regularly. The roads, hub deep with

dust in summer, were bad now, honeycombed with mud holes, and the mail

was late.

As I sat there with a corduroy jacket about my shoulders, my muddy boots

heavy on my tired feet, and held the letter with the Italian postmark

unopened for a moment in my hands it seemed as if the past four years

were a dream, and the scene before me an utter unreality. At the gate to

the road stood a pair of orange trees upon which the fruit was being

left to ripen for home consumption. The orchards were stripped weeks

earlier, for we picked green and sweated our oranges. Beyond the

sentinel trees with their yellow fruit glowing like lanterns in the dark

foliage, a flock of runner ducks squawked noisily in the head ditch,

which had flowed by the house since the early days when Peaches' mother

lived there and used to get the water for her household from it.

Distantly a file of turbaned Hindu pickers, bound for a neighbor's

walnut grove, passed, silhouetted against the sky, and vanished into the

more overbearing outlines of a row of eucalyptus trees upon the ridge,

and a pair of smartly overalled, immaculate Japanese laborers equipped

like aviators, and gloved against the orange thorns, passed along the

road, chattering unintelligibly, their picking equipment strapped to

their shoulders like knapsacks, their sturdy boots swinging rhythmically

to their chatter.

I could see all this, and the environment, which had once been as

strange as a prism seen through a kaleidoscope, yet which was the only

reality I had known for four years, now took on its pristine strangeness

once more, and the letter in my hands brought a wave of homesickness

upon me--not for Italy, but for Boston, I scarcely know why. For several

moments I sat so, and then at length I opened the envelope where the

censor had closed it, and read.

It sounded tired, that letter did, though, of course, it told very

little, being censored.

"We are frightfully busy," Abby wrote, "but hopeful of an end to it all

before long. I hope it may be true that peace is near, for we have

suffered enough. We are not so gay as once we were, my dear, but just as

brave. Things have changed so, and people are gone. I hear among others

that our gay, mysterious and gallant Sandro was killed at ---- Sir

Anthony told me, and he got it from Captain Silvano, whom you may

remember at Mentone. Killed in a very brave bit of action, I believe,

too. Ah, well! So many people are making reparation for sins known and

unknown by heroic sacrifice in the war. It is the great confessional."

I did not read further just then. Something impelled me to look up.

Alicia was standing in front of me with grave golden eyes, her body

actually seeming to give off a magnetic force which compelled me against

my will to an immediate confession of what I would have preferred to

break to her in a proper fashion.

"Free!" she said too quietly. "Is he--dead?"

It was the first mention which had been made of the duke in almost a

year. I had begun to think she had forgotten--or at least determined to

forget. I should have known better. I handed her the letter. It was the

only thing I could do. She took it and read it silently, still looking

off at the purple cloud bank of the coast range with its snow patches

melting into the fleece of the little clouds which seemed to rest upon

them--the barren gold-and-violet mountains, so infinite, eternal,

restful and inspiring. Her face was like marble and I thought of the old

psalmist: "I lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my

strength," and knew she would get strength from the coast range, from

the infinite expanse of Nature, even as I had got it before now.

"In a very brave action," she said automatically. Then she threw her

head back in a proud gesture, as though somebody had tried to strike her

and failed; and without another word she turned and went into the house.

I allowed her to go alone. Somehow I had gradually come to recognize a

difference between Alicia and other young women of my acquaintance--and

I knew that there was nothing I could say to her just then. She had the

strength of those hills, or rather mountains--she was made of their

very substance. I felt helpless. Besides, it was time to go through the

lower orchards, where the Hindus were stripping olives in fear of a

possible touch of frost, and somebody had to attend to things. So I

rose, much depressed but urged by the duty before me. That was women's

salvation during the war--the pressure of work to be done. And Pinto was

again in Washington.

But that night Peaches became humanized. I suppose the darkness was too

much for her. I was unable to endure her sobbing unless I could

participate in it. And so I went into her room toward morning, and we

were wretched in company. It was then that she showed me the wallet.

"Oh, my dear!" I said. "If only you had a souvenir or something of his!"

"I have!" replied poor Peaches unexpected. "I'll show it to you."

She turned on the light and reached under her tear-stained pillow--an

incongruously gay figure in her striped pyjamas--and produced an

envelope from which she drew a worn case of black morocco leather. It

was thin and flat and no bigger than the palm of your hand.

"I have this, and two letters, and the rose he picked with the little

gold knife I gave him," she said.

"What is it?" I made inquiry.

"I don't know," she said. "There's something written in Italian inside.

He left it by accident on the day before he disappeared."

"By accident?" I said. "How?"

"Well, I found it on the sofa," said Peaches. "And it has his name in

it. I was going to return it next day at luncheon--the luncheon to

which he never came."

Then she broke down again.

"I guess it's only a Dago mileage book," she sobbed, "but it's all I've

got of his! He must have used it a lot!" She buried her head in the

pillow, the wallet clasped tightly to her breast, and I stole out of the

room without seeing the contents. If only I had looked--insisted on

looking at it then, what a lot of trouble we would have been spared! But

as my dear father used to say, it is easy to be wise in retrospect. At

the time I thought merely of Peaches getting a little sleep and that

somebody had to get up and start the Chinaman or the foremen wouldn't

get their breakfast by five o'clock, and there was still one sheltered

flat of oranges to be picked.

Though the lugs were already in the orchard I knew that if we were ever

to get through in time to make a complete shipment we must begin work as

soon as it was light enough to see the yellow glow under the green on

the fruit, and work until it was so dark that the prime oranges were

indistinguishable from the unripe ones, and the Mohammedans would come

out of the orchard and pray, in their heathen manner, facing where they

supposed Mecca to be. Somebody had to see to things, even in time of

sorrow, and I was what Peaches cryptically termed the "goat."

Mr. Kipling may not have known it, but the dawn comes up like thunder in

California, too, so it is really no effort to rise early, once you are

accustomed to so doing. It is a common observation that when one does

get up at sunrise one wonders why one does not do it always. And for

almost three years such had been my continuous habit.

I set about my duties this morning, however, with a heavy heart, for I

anticipated a long siege with Peaches and her grief. But by the time the

foremen had gone to their sections and I myself had ridden the rounds of

the various orchards to see that all was well, and given the Chinaman

instructions about the meals, which instructions he would later pretend

not to have heard, and had ridden over to the sluice at the top of the

head ditch to see why the new feed to the seedling flat wasn't working

properly, and taken a look at the flock of turkeys which I had imported

to keep the grasshoppers down and which had lately been depleted by

coyotes, I returned to my second breakfast; and there was Peaches

already seated at table, well-groomed in her riding clothes, and

prepared to accompany me to the packing sheds at the railroads.

She was a trifle pale perhaps, and rather quieter than ever, but

perfectly composed, and even smiled a little as I sat down beside her

and attacked my meal.

"I'm all set now, Free," she whispered. "I'll just do my bit, as he did

his."

And then we got out the car and went to town. I drove, at her request,

and between bumps and mud holes watched her out of one corner of my eye

for any signs of a breakdown. But none came, either then or later in the

long sheds where the sweated fruit roared down the channel of the

separator, falling into the bins like golden hail, which the wives and

daughters of the neighboring ranchers stood swiftly packing; a most

competent lot of females, very swift and precise and earning a good bit

of pin money thus every year.

Peaches stood outside all day, checking up the lugs as they arrived,

arranging about freight rates, overseeing the allotment of box cars to

the various growers, and generally doing a man's job. And never once

during the twelve months which followed did I know her to fail in her

work--her magnificent constitution helping, no doubt, to pull her

through. But I could see that a permanent change had taken place in her

from the day of Abby's letter. She was no longer the madcap, and though

she was even more beautiful she was different--and through love, the

great tamer--as Blake would have it.

This was the first incident to which I have referred as punctuating the

monotony of the war for us. The second occurred more than a year later,

in November, 1918, when we, like many another group of ranchers

throughout the country, thought the town hall was on fire when all the

time it was only the armistice.

Mr. Markheim, Pinto and Alicia and myself were indoors, an unusually

cold snap having offered us the treat of an open fire, a not unmixed

pleasure by reason of our being under some anxiety about the trees. But

on the whole it was what some modern poet whose name I cannot at the

moment recall has termed the end of a perfect day.

To begin with, I had dispatched three pounds of wool to Euphemia, whom

Galadia, my only source of information about my sister, had written was

doing great work for the Red Cross; her chief natural gift, that of

knitting, had suddenly become of immense importance since the outbreak

of the war, and she had to her credit and the honor of the family three

hundred pair of socks. The achievement appeared almost foreign to me,

inasmuch as I had not knitted any socks since that momentous pair at

Monte Carlo, a surprising faculty for a more active existence having

developed in me during my sojourn on the ranch. At any rate I had sent

out the wool, finished my last jar of marmalade, of which I had made an

experimental thousand for a market which Mr. Pegg intended the

development of, and Mr. Markheim had returned from a visit East in

company with Pinto. Peaches had that day succeeded in breaking a pony

she had long desired as a saddle horse and had hitherto been

unsuccessful with. Mr. Pegg had a special design for the marmalade

jars--a crystal orange, of the natural size and shape, the preserved

fruit to furnish the color, and he and I were most enthusiastic over it.

Mr. Markheim also credited himself with a successful trip, though from a

wholly different cause. It appeared that he had at length contrived to

install in his house a picture which he had long coveted, and this

picture was none other than the Madonna of the Lamp, for which he had

paid five hundred thousand dollars. Since his purchase of it the picture

had been stored, and it seemed to me a strange time to trouble with

getting it out. But Sebastian Markheim, with the fervor of the true

collector and the madness which seems the hall-mark of his kind, was

apparently oblivious of this circumstance and became wrapt in his

description of it.

"You must have seen it in Vienna," he said. "Good heavens, don't say you

have seen photographs of it! You cannot imagine the beauty of the thing

itself. I have given directions for the remodeling of the south wall of

my library in the Ossining house for its occupancy. It will hang all

alone on that wall--it's only a small picture, you know, so I have had

Hasbrock, the architect, design some panels to encircle it I hope it is

going to please you, Alicia."

"What?" said Mr. Pegg twirling round suddenly from the bowl of ripe

olives with which he was occupied. "What's that? Why should Alicia be

pleased?"

"She's going to live there with it!" said Markheim. "She promised this

afternoon!"

"Oh, no!" I said getting to my feet. But nobody seemed to hear me.

"Yes, father," said Alicia. Then Pinto's face broke into a sort of

crooked smile and he held out his hands to both of them.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he said. "Think of my Peaches picking out a

friend of her father's! Why, Markheim, you must be somewhere near my own

age!"

"Why, pa, how rude!" said Alicia. "Aren't you going to kiss me? And you

too, Free! Stop standing there like a dummy! People get married all the

time--there's nothing unusual about it, you poor nuts! Come on,

congratulate us!"

Well, of course, I recovered myself as best I could, and pecked her on

the cheek. But I didn't feel my congratulations--I simply couldn't feel

them. To marry that old man. And a foreigner! And a German Swiss! And

everything! It was too dreadful! Nothing could make me feel that she was

doing it for any reason except pity and because he had nagged her into

it with his ceaseless attentions. Of course we had nothing against him,

absolutely nothing, because after all being a millionaire art collector

is not in itself strictly criminal. But with the memory of that

beautiful romance in Italy still fresh in my own mind I could not

understand it--I simply could not; and every fiber of my being resented

it. Youth and age! It was all wrong. She had a silly notion that her

heart was dead, and that it didn't matter what she did. That if it gave

Sebastian happiness to marry her--why, he was good and kind and rich and

cultured and famous, and why not give joy since one could no longer

experience it?

I could see in a flash what had gone on in her simple, honest, generous

mind, and it nearly drove me wild, while all the time I had to stand

there grinning and patting her on the shoulder, and saying how wonderful

it all was, when in reality I wanted to drag her out of the room and

shake her for being such a great silly fool, and force her to stop it

before anyone else heard of her folly and she found herself in the

complications of public knowledge of her engagement.

Instead of which I stood round and admired the wonderful five-carat

diamond ring which Markheim produced, and behaved like an idiot

generally.

"Well, well, when is it to be?" Mr. Pegg wanted to know.

Alicia turned her big eyes slowly from her marvelous jewel to her

father's puzzled face.

"I have promised Sebastian," she said slowly, "to marry him as soon as

the war is over!"

Her tone had, to my ears, the expectancy of a long reprieve.

And it was at that minute that the fire bells began to ring.

You can be sure we all rushed out at that, crying, "Where is it? What is

the matter?" and many other similar exclamations natural to the

situation. But at first nobody seemed to know. The Chinese cook came

out, frying pan in hand, and began running round in circles. The hands

were soon straggling in from their camp in the gulch by the river.

Somebody, Mr. Pegg, I think, tried the telephone, but could get no

answer. By this time almost everybody on the ranch had assembled before

the house, shivering with the frost and searching the sky for signs of

the incendiary glare, but in vain. An automobile dashed by down the

Letterbox road with two prospectors in it. One was firing a gun like mad

and he yelled something unintelligible at us in passing but ignored our

invitation to stop.

Then from the direction of the town a flivver emerged out of the swiftly

falling dusk, and as it stopped in front of our gate a man in the

uniform of an American captain jumped down with the aid of his uninjured

arm, the other being supported by a sling, and came running toward us,

flinging his cap into the air, the lights from our porch gleaming upon

his excited face and upon the decorations on his breast.

"Victory!" he shouted. "Victory! Schoolhouse fire? Hell! The armistice

was signed at two o'clock to-day!"

It was Richard, the chauffeur, and I assure you that it was at that

moment that I recognized the strong family resemblance and decided that

he might after all be a Talbot--one of our Talbots.

You can imagine the wild riot into which the news and the bearer of it

threw us. I cannot describe it. Everyone went crazy and I have a blurred

recollection of kissing several persons, the Chinaman among them. But

only one thing remains clearly in my mind--Alicia standing like a stone

in a corner of the veranda, her white face lifted to the rising moon,

and Markheim running toward her with burning words which seemed to fall

upon deaf ears.

"Alicia, Alicia, it's the end of the war!" he was shouting.

X

I recall upon one occasion my dear father having said that love in a

cottage was better than politeness in a mansion, and this came at once

to mind upon the occasion of our visit to Sebastian Markheim's palace on

the banks of the upper section of the Hudson River.

This took place just six months after that wonderful night when my dear

nephew, as I was now convinced he was, returned, so to speak, with the

armistice in his pocket. Sebastian, as I was now instructed to call Mr.

Markheim, had desired us to come sooner, in order that Peaches might

herself assist in selecting the plans and furnishings incident to the

remodeling of what was to be her home.

But Peaches was reluctant to go. Of course there was a good deal of

readjustment to be done on all her father's ranches, and while he was in

the south, where the big orchards were, we set in order the home ranch,

which had been practically in our charge for a year and a half, and she

gave as excuse for the delay the necessity for making these

readjustments herself. Richard was to be left in complete charge and she

busied herself quite unnecessarily in showing him a thousand details.

Every week she would promise to be ready, and when the time came she

would have discovered something that nobody else could take care of,

which was all nonsense, because a citrus ranch practically takes care of

itself during the winter months. But by hook and crook she held us off

until April, and then at last we were ready to go.

I will state that I for one was unreservedly eager to go home--to go

East. I was, in point of fact, so excited at the prospect that on the

night before our departure I found myself unable to compose myself to

slumber, and rising from my uneasy couch I donned a robe and ventured

forth from my bedchamber, which was upon the ground floor.

The moonlight, which flooded the garden, gave it an uncanny distorted

aspect, and all at once as I sat there, huddled upon a bench close to

the wall of the house, I seemed to see the ranch and its surroundings

with the same eyes which envisioned it upon my arrival so long ago. This

sudden clarity of vision was doubtless due to the subconscious influence

of my impending departure. At any rate the place, which I had grown so

accustomed to that I beheld it only with the blindness of familiarity,

seemed once more the impossibly crude wilderness that it appeared to be

upon my arrival.

For in the northern part of California there is little of the induced

luxuriance of the South. There is something of the Eastern farmer's

fight with the elements and a Nature that is not always overly kind or

utterly dependable, and our garden was not a thing of lovely lawns,

dense shrubs and misty glades. Far from it. Our flower beds were as

practically irrigated as our orchards, standing deep in mud and lifting

their wonderful blossoms from the mire we so religiously provided for

them. There was none of the trimness of an Eastern estate about our more

than practical, enterprising organization. Rather it bore the general

aspect of Boston Common after an August holiday. It was, in plain truth,

shockingly untidy, and I was horrified to realize that even I, who had

been so carefully reared by the immaculate Euphemia, had made only the

most feeble sort of effort to tidy up. I had been unable to see the

molehills for the mountains, as one might say. But now, with the thought

of the concentrated, condensed East before me, I perceived the

unevenness of our paths, the forgotten bundle of old papers outside the

storehouse, the broken gate which everyone cursed at but forgot to mend;

and the olive and orange clad hills beyond grew dim in my mind's eye

even as they formed but indistinguishable black patches in the

cloud-changing moonlight. A deep longing for my own kind of living swept

over me, and I even went so far as to experience a desire for Euphemia's

breakfast room on Chestnut Street, and the mended table linen--the

careful little things of life grown dear through years of painstakingly

careful usage.

Moved by this overwhelming impulse I was on the verge of rising and

gathering up that disgracefully untidy bundle of papers and carrying it

to the trash bin where it belonged, thus at once satisfying a normal

impulse and proving to myself that my upbringing had not been in vain,

when I became aware that the window above my head had been opened softly

and that someone--Peaches, without a doubt, since that was her

chamber--was standing there, crying softly.

My first impulse was to speak--to go to her with what comfort I was

capable of offering, but having for an instant refrained I could not do

so. Since the announcement of her betrothal to Markheim a wall had

sprung up between us as far as her intimate life was concerned. Indeed

she seemed to have withdrawn into herself curiously, though I doubt that

anyone realized it as keenly as did I.

And then having failed to speak immediately I found myself in an awkward

predicament. Should I move or not? I had no desire to eavesdrop for the

confidence she withheld, and yet I felt it my bounden duty as her

chaperon and guardian and older woman generally to know all about her by

one means or another, for her own good, and not out of mere female

curiosity. And so allowing my sense of responsibility to conquer my

delicacy I kept very still, and before long my diligence was rewarded.

"A clean sweep!" whispered Peaches at her window. "No use kidding

myself. I'll make the break clean. It's the only thing to do!"

There was a short silence punctuated only by a few sniffs, and then an

object flew through the air over my head and landed in the pool with a

splash. The window above was closed with a snap. Whatever ritual she had

been at was over. But not so the fulfillment of my duty as her

protectress.

No sooner had I made sure that she was not going to change her mind and

come down after it, than I crept stealthily to the water's edge, having

carefully noted the very spot where the object fell, and kneeling on the

concrete basin's brim, greatly to the detriment of that portion of my

anatomy which bore the weight, being clad only for private life, I

fished determinedly for the best part of half an hour, my sleeves rolled

up but not escaping the effects of my earnest endeavor, and my curls

getting thoroughly soaked.

Fortunately Peaches' aim, usually so accurate and far reaching in the

pursuit of the national sport of baseball, or in any other emergency

such as reaching a high-hung apple, had fallen a little short this time,

her secret having hit the shallow end of the pond. And so it was that

after a very considerable period of effort I did retrieve the object,

and retreated with it to the seclusion of my room.

Once there I lit the lamp, drew the curtains, locked the door and

proceeded with my duty still further. It was a terribly moist little

bundle, done up in a silk handkerchief and weighted with the bronze

paper-weight I had given Peaches for Christmas. But I was too much

interested to mind this slight. For inside the bundle were two letters,

already a mere pulpy mass from the soaking they had sustained, a brittle

something which might once have been a rose, and the duke's wallet!

The latter was still intact, but before examining it I made a little

fire on the hearth, and by diligent coaxing managed to consume the

remnants of the other souvenirs. They were no one's affairs except that

of the lovers and no other eyes should behold them unbidden. And when

they were quite concealed in the ashes of the fireplace I returned to

the light and examined the wallet carefully. It seemed to me that there

simply must be more to the matter than appeared. In any of those books

which had so deep an influence upon my early thinking the discoverer of

such a wallet would have surprised a jewel of value, secret documents

popularly referred to as 'the papers,' or a marriage certificate which

cleared the honor of the hero's mother, or something equally vital. And

I must confess that I, in opening my find, rather anticipated some such

discovery, but my expectations were doomed to disappointment, for it was

in very truth what Peaches had suggested--a mileage ticket of some sort

made out in Sandro's name!

I will say that this end to my exciting evening was a trifle flat, but

as my dear father used to say, our chief pleasure lies in anticipation

and no disappointment in the event can cheat us of that. So I simply

decided to put the thing carefully away in the bottom of my reticule in

case it was ever needed. What with the war and all, one never can tell

who is going to turn up a hero; and just think what souvenirs of Rupert

Brooke, for example, are worth to-day, not to mention Napoleon and

General Grant, and so forth, whose hero-value has, of course, been

augmented with age.

Well, at any rate, that was all there was to it at the time. I slept the

sleep of duty well done, because I was determined to take care of

Peaches in spite of herself, and the next morning rose refreshed, to

make the early train for San Francisco, where we were to join Mr. Pegg

and turn our faces eastward.

The house which Sebastian Markheim had remodeled for his bride-to-be was

already a sumptuous structure worthy of the famous collection of art

treasures which it housed, and his efforts in altering it had been bent

rather in the direction of improving its livableness and making it a

cheerier spot to which to bring a young wife. The object of our visit

was that Peaches be given the opportunity of making it completely to her

liking in advance of her possession of it, and incidentally to make the

acquaintance of her future neighbors, and of Mr. Markheim's set

generally.

He had planned a large house party as the means of introducing his

fiancée to his social world, and she intended to procure her trousseau

in New York during the intervals of gayety. Mr. Pegg was enchanted at

the prospect thus opened up before him, and I was myself much elated at

the thought of experiencing some real social life once more, for Abby's

hospitality in dear old Italy, so lavish and yet in such excellent good

form, had given me a taste for the gaieties my restricted youth had

lacked. Even Peaches was gay, though not as of yore, but rather with a

mature, stately gayety, and her manner toward me had become positively

motherly.

"There now, Free!" she soothed me one day when I had expressed a mild

concern about her state of mind. "There now, Free, don't you worry about

me! We all have to grow up sometime, don't we? Can't stay young plants

forever--especially we women. Comes a time when we got to be grafted on

to old stock and get ready for bearing--eh? Well, that's me, old thing!"