She couldn't have hated smallpox worse—in me.

"Honest Injun, I don't know!" I admitted. "Of course, it does seem absurd to ponder over what a family row might be raised in the Seventh 53 Circle of Nirvana by the publication of these old love-letters, but—"

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"James Mackenzie Christie died in 1849," she declared vehemently. "Absurd! It is insane!"

"That's what the Uncle Lancelot part of my intelligence keeps telling me," I laughed. "But—good heavens! you just ought to hear the grandfather argument."

"What does he—what does that silly Salem conscience of yours say against the publication of the letters?" she asked grudgingly.

I sat down again.

"Shall I tell you?" I began good-naturedly, for I saw that mother was at the melting point—melting into tears, however, not assent. "Whenever I want to do anything I'm not exactly sure of, these two provoking old gentlemen come into the room—the council-chamber of my heart—and begin their post-mortem warfare. Grandfather is white-bearded and serene, while Uncle Lancelot looks exactly as an Italian tenor ought to look—and never does." 54

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"And you look exactly like him," mother snapped viciously. "Nothing about you resembles your grandfather except your brow and eyes."

"I know that," I answered resignedly. "Hasn't some one said that the upper part of my face is as lofty as a Byronic thought—and the lower as devilish as a Byronic deed?"

Neither of them smiled, but Guilford stirred a little.

"Go on with your argument, Grace," he urged patiently. He was always patient.

"I'm going!" I answered. "All day grandfather has been telling me what I already know—that the Coburn-Colt Company doesn't want those letters of James Christie's because they are literary, or beautiful, or historical, but simply and solely because they are bad! They'll make a good-seller because they're the thing the public demands right now. Lady Frances Webb was a married woman!"

"Nonsense," mother interrupted, with a blush. "The public doesn't demand bad things! There 55 is merely a craze for intimate, biographical matter—told in the first person."

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