her brother he had a feeling of equality of age.

“Look here,” he spoke impulsively, “may I tell you all about it? It would relieve my mind immensely.”

[43]To Jane it was a thrilling moment. Having poured the coffee, she came out from behind her battlement of silver and sat in her chintz chair. She did not knit; she was enchanted by the tale that Towne was telling. She sat very still, her hands folded, the tropical birds about her. To Frederick she seemed like a bird herself—slim and lovely, and with a voice that sang!

[43]

Towne was not an impressionable man. His years of bachelorhood had hardened him to feminine arts. But here was no artfulness. Jane assumed nothing. She was herself. As he talked to her, he became aware of some stirred emotion. An almost youthful eagerness to shine as the hero of his tale. If he embroidered the theme, it was for her benefit. What he told was as he saw it. But what he told was not the truth, nor even half of it.

[44]

CHAPTER IV BEAUTY WAITS

Edith Towne had lived with her Uncle Frederick nearly four years when she became engaged to Delafield Simms. Her mother was dead, as was her father. Frederick was her father’s only brother, and had a big house to himself, after his mother’s death. It seemed the only haven for his niece, so he asked her, and asked also his father’s cousin, Annabel Towne, to keep house for him, and chaperone Edith.

Edith Towne

Annabel was over sixty, and rather indefinite, but she served to play propriety, and there was nothing else demanded of her in Frederick’s household of six servants. She was a dried-up and desiccated person, with fixed ideas of what one owed to society. Frederick’s mother had been like that, so he did not mind. He rather liked to think that the woman of his family kept to old ideals. It gave to things an air of dignity.

Edith, when she came, was different. So different that Frederick was glad that she had three more years at college before she would spend the winters with him. The summers were not hard to arrange. Edith and Annabel adjourned to the Towne cottage on an island in Maine—and Frederick[45] went up for week-ends and for the month of August. Edith spent much time out-of-doors with her young friends. She was rather fond of her Uncle Fred, but he did not loom large on the horizon of her youthful occupations.

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