The retail price of this book is twenty five cents. 
 This is the price at which it should be bought from book 
 sellers ; the price at which it can be bought direct from 
 the publisher. 
 
 FRANK A. MUNSEY.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES 
 
 A TALE OF NORTH AND SOUTH 
 
 RICHARD MACE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FRANK A. MUNSEY 
 1897
 
 COPYRIGHT. I&)7 
 BY 
 
 FRANK A. MUNSEY
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 i. 
 
 A TINY little apartment on a cross street 
 in New York, not too far from the 
 " Tenderloin District." There is a degage 
 air about the little parlor which is extremely 
 fascinating to the man who likes a cigar after 
 dinner, and to put his feet on something. 
 There are ottomans and cushions, endless 
 cushions covered with bright striped stuffs 
 that look as though tired heads knew them. 
 
 The piano is open, and so is the writing 
 desk. There is music on one, and scattered 
 leaves on the other. By the one table sit 
 the husband and wife, whose gatherings of fluff 
 have gone to create this nest : Mr. and Mrs. 
 Baylor. 
 
 " Two hundred and eighty, and six hundred 
 
 and forty, certainly make let me see. Yes ! 
 
 i 
 
 2047017
 
 2 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 They certainly do make nine hundred and 
 twenty. The Lord only knows where it is, 
 but we are some better off than we ought to 
 be." 
 
 "Count your money," says Mrs. Baylor, with 
 the inspiration of a bright idea. 
 
 Mr. Baylor goes down into his pockets, and 
 comes up with a little leather purse, which is 
 evidently the sole receptacle of his worldly 
 wealth, for after he discovers it, he goes no 
 farther in his process of exploration. 
 
 He takes out three or four untidy wads, 
 which spread out into bank notes. There 
 are also in the purse two blue coupons torn 
 from theater tickets, a key, and a crumpled 
 card, all of which he empties out. 
 
 " Dear me ! " Mary says, taking up the bits 
 of pasteboard. " Here are our coupons for last 
 night. Wasift Ada Rehan the loveliest crea 
 ture you ever saw 7 ? That voice of hers is 
 just music." 
 
 " She wouldn t be anything if it were not 
 for Daly. He forces her. She d be play 
 ing "
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 3 
 
 There was an angry flush upon Mrs. Bay 
 lor s face, but her voice was calm and entirely 
 free from expression. 
 
 " I suppose you think she ought to have 
 gone on the stage from upper Fifth Avenue, 
 to be able to play in the parts she plays at 
 Daly s?" 
 
 " Well, not much ! " says Mr. Baylor with 
 emphasis, still engaged in unfolding and try 
 ing to decipher the card he has taken out. 
 He wonders what in the deuce it is, and how 
 he ever happened to put it there. 
 
 There is mollification at once on the very 
 brilliantly colored and mobile face of Mrs. 
 Baylor, and she turns her attention again to 
 the hat slie is trimming. Both of them seem 
 to have forgotten the little pile of money on 
 the table. 
 
 " This card ! Why, this card is that ad 
 dress at Atlantic City that little house where 
 Janeway was last year, when he went to write 
 up that story about the Middletons. We 
 meant to go down there this spring for a 
 while, but I suppose your everlasting anxiety
 
 4 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 to go down to Ellenbro and live in a house 
 of your own will knock us out of all that." 
 Mr. Baylor lighted a cigarette and puffed at it 
 with the true spirit of the dilettante. " I only 
 hope, my dear Polly, that you ll like it when 
 you get there." 
 
 " Like it? Of course I ll like it," says Mrs. 
 Baylor with conviction. " Who wouldn t like 
 it ? Aren t we going to live in our own big 
 house, with room to turn round in, and isn t 
 Dolly going to have a pony, and I a garden ? 
 And aren t we going to have money enough 
 so that you can write your great play in peace 
 
 and comfort, and " Mrs. Baylor s voice 
 
 ended in a gasp of satisfaction. 
 
 " We can go abroad on that money," says 
 Mr. Baylor, "and live about in all the places we 
 have dreamed of. We can go down to Al 
 giers, to Florence, to Nice, to Monte Carlo. 
 You can live very cheaply over there. Three 
 thousand dollars a year isn t much to keep up 
 a big old place like Castle Hill, but it is 
 riches to us if we keep on living as we ve been 
 doing."
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 5 
 
 " That s exactly what I m just not going to 
 do. It s all very well for you and me, but Dolly 
 is going to be brought up a lady ! " 
 
 Mr. Baylor winced just the least trifle. 
 
 " I hope she d be that wherever she was 
 brought up like her mother before her," he 
 said with courtesy. 
 
 " You know what I mean, Dick, just as 
 well as I know myself. I want Dolly to 
 always have things like other girls. I want 
 her to have a home, not to be knocked about 
 from pillar to post, and friends and you 
 know." 
 
 Mr. Baylor was of the blond type, consider 
 ably older than his wife and rather blase. He 
 hated with a hatred that passeth understand 
 ing, anything sentimental or disagreeable. 
 Now he went back to his wads of money and 
 his card. 
 
 " There s forty dollars here. According to 
 that account, I ought to have ninety. I m 
 blessed if I know what s become of the rest 
 of it." 
 
 "What s the difference?" says Mrs. Baylor
 
 6 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 with serenity. " What difference does money 
 make to us now? We re rich ! " 
 
 A shrill whistle comes up from the street, 
 and there is a sharp, short ring at the flat 
 bell. Mrs. Baylor puts her pretty head out of 
 the window. 
 
 " It s the postman," she announces, and 
 having delivered herself of this superfluous 
 piece of information, she goes calmly back to 
 the mirror and devotes herself to trying the 
 effect of various eccentric bends in the brim 
 of the new hat. 
 
 "/yY it a beauty?" says Mrs. Baylor, with 
 justifiable pride. " When it comes to hats, it 
 takes an artist s touch. For my part, I pity 
 the woman whose only resource is a milliner s 
 shop. Poor witless things ! " 
 
 Mrs. Baylor has been married four years, 
 but her cheeks are as rosy and her eyes as 
 happy and gay, and her movements as free as 
 though she were sixteen and just out of a 
 gymnasium. She had never been of sufficient 
 consequence to have her beauty questioned. 
 Most of the people she knows are men, men
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 7 
 
 who are her husband s friends and hers, and 
 they have frankly admired her; told her when 
 her clothes were becoming, and criticised 
 them when they were not. But it would be 
 an ugly garment and a very critical man that 
 must come together to find Mary Baylor 
 anything but sweet and charming and delight 
 ful. The sweetness of springtime is in her 
 breath, and the sunny heart of summer in her 
 smile. 
 
 Baylor thinks all this as he looks at her, 
 posing before him, light footed, the hat she 
 has just made set jauntily on her head. 
 
 " Mary, my darling," he says calmly, as one 
 stating a judicial fact, "you ll simply loathe it 
 down in Ellenbro ." 
 
 " Not I," says Mrs. Baylor. 
 
 There is a quick staccato knock at the door, 
 and almost before it can be answered there is 
 a good humored, foreign looking face, the face 
 of a man of sixty, whom everybody would 
 recognize as owning his years and describe 
 as " looking forty." Poncet was " well pre 
 served."
 
 8 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " I have some letters for you," he said gaily, 
 before he could be greeted other than by 
 Mary s smile and gesture of invitation. "One 
 for madarne," presenting it with a bow, "and 
 another for monsieur," and he held the busi 
 ness envelope out to Baylor s indifferent 
 fingers. 
 
 " Sit down, Poncet. Sit down and have a 
 cigar. What s new in New York ? " 
 
 Baylor brought out a box of cigars, and saw 
 his visitor established before he turned to his 
 own letter. 
 
 Neither of them noticed Mary. She had 
 opened the envelope, after having first looked 
 at the address as though a recognition of the 
 handwriting were the only possible means she 
 could have of learning the writer, and then 
 had unfolded the sheet with curiosity. As she 
 saw the first words she drew in her breath with 
 a little gasp, and looked at her husband with 
 what was almost fear in her face. If Baylor 
 had seen it, it would have astonished him be 
 yond words. Secrets and fears were unknown 
 between these two. Mary put the letter in
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 9 
 
 its envelope and tucked it under her belt, 
 and gathering together the remnants of her 
 hat materials, started to leave the room. 
 
 As she passed Baylor he looked up at her. 
 
 " Who was your letter from, Polly ? Old 
 Griggs ? How is the old fellow ? " 
 
 " Very well," Mary said in a constrained 
 voice, and left the room. Outside she took 
 the letter out and read it quickly, and then, 
 her face white and anxious, tore it into small 
 bits, and opening the window, let them fly out 
 into the street.
 
 II. 
 
 "pHE little rooms at Atlantic City were in 
 an airy building attached to a bath house. 
 The morning sun streamed in at the windows, 
 and the wind brought the spray of the ocean, 
 which lapped and rolled and pounded away as 
 though it were inviting the world to come and 
 play with it. 
 
 Mary dressed her baby in the dainty little 
 garments her own fingers had fashioned while 
 Mr. Baylor drank his coffee, which he always 
 took in bed, and read over the morning 
 paper. 
 
 " By Jove," he exclaimed, " here s our next 
 door neighbor, staying at the hotel just be 
 hind us." 
 
 " Who ? Not surely not Poncet from 
 276." 
 
 " My innocent child ! Our neighbors in 
 these days mean the inhabitants of the sylvan
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 1 1 
 
 shades of Ellenbro . Listen to this, in the 
 Atlantic City arrivals : General and Mrs. 
 Courtney, Mr. Reginald Courtney, and Miss 
 Smith. 
 
 " Disguised under the plebeian name of 
 Smith, my dear Mary, is the richest girl in 
 our part of the country. She is the catch. 
 She has a broad face like a Holstein cow, and 
 is about as intelligent. But she is pure white. 
 She hasn t any black spots," added Mr. Bay 
 lor, as though he feared that Miss Smith 
 might be mistaken for the animal mentioned 
 unless he explained. " The Courtneys want 
 to catch her for Reginald, who isn t a half 
 bad fellow, and who does, I believe, like Miss 
 Smith first rate. My dear, good sister Eliza 
 supplied me with the current gossip of the 
 county when I saw her last. Good gracious, 
 Mary, do you think you can ever break into 
 the harness of going about and minding your 
 neighbors business? Not that they ll be 
 likely to offer you the opportunity very soon. 
 We are black sheep, my dear, and it will prob 
 ably be some time before we are taken into
 
 12 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 the confidences of our first families down in 
 Ellenbro . They never were very fond of me." 
 
 u And I," Mary said, flushing, " am entirely 
 out of it. Not that I care. But I am not 
 going to believe that people will not be kind 
 to me. I am sure I want everybody to have 
 his own good time in his own good way. I am 
 not going to pretend I am trying to be like 
 them. I wouldrft be ! " 
 
 " You are better than the best of the lot, 
 my dear, and the reason I love you is because 
 you are such an everlasting simpleton. I 
 hope, for my own sake, that the old tabbies 
 never lick you into shape. It might be better 
 for Dolly to have a conventional mamma, see 
 ing that it is likely that she will never have a 
 conventional papa. She will need somebody 
 to marry her off " 
 
 " I will not be made over. I am me" said 
 Mrs. Baylor with fine scorn. " And Dolly will 
 need no one to marry her off." 
 
 " Mary, my love, you are developing a very 
 ill bred habit of interrupting people in the 
 middle of their sentences."
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 13 
 
 Baylor had lighted a cigar, and was in the 
 midst of an editorial in a New York paper, 
 but he was keeping one side of his indolent 
 consciousness toward his wife. 
 
 " My ways may all be ill bred, according to 
 your family s standards, but any way they are 
 honest. I say exactly what I mean." 
 
 " And tell all you know." 
 
 A quick, embarrassed little flush came up 
 into Mrs. Baylor s face, and she turned to little 
 Dolly s bonnet, tying the strings with her face 
 almost inside. 
 
 " I declare," Mr. Baylor said, " if McDonald 
 hasn t gone and written up all that stuff I 
 told him the other day about famous gam 
 blers. And here it is, illustrated in this sheet. 
 I suppose he thought he had to be remunerated 
 for his losses at poker that last night." 
 
 " I hate gambling," Mary said vindictively. 
 
 Mr. Baylor declined to answer, and argu 
 ment was senseless. Little Dolly was curled 
 and dressed and bonneted by this time. Her 
 mother turned her around and looked at her 
 admiringly, as though she were a big doll.
 
 14 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " Go and kiss your papa by by, baby, and 
 tell him he is a lazy thing not to go to break 
 fast with us ! I know you don t want to take 
 us down to Ellenbro we re a bother but 
 I m going ! " And Mrs. Baylor shuts the 
 door with emphasis, as though her morning 
 coffee lay in that new home she was so anxious 
 to see.
 
 III. 
 
 TT is still before noon. Up in one of the 
 pavilions there is a little group of four. 
 The sort of people who are always described 
 as a " family party," the sort of people who 
 are invariably recognized everywhere as being 
 from " out of town," to their own eternal mys 
 tification. 
 
 They bought their clothes at the best 
 establishments in New York, and yet nobody 
 seemed to take them for New Yorkers. Not 
 that they were particularly anxious to be 
 known as city people. The name of Courtney 
 was too well known in that part of the middle 
 South where they lived for them to envy any 
 man his habitation. 
 
 General Courtney, general of militia for 
 
 twenty five years, was a large gentleman with 
 
 a quiet manner and a good deal of gray hair, 
 
 on head and lip. Mrs. Courtney, who would 
 
 15
 
 1 6 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 appear on her tombstone as his " beloved and 
 respected wife," held her head up with the air 
 of a woman who has her way in about every 
 position in which she is thrown, an air calcu 
 lated to impress the weak and cause mirth in 
 the strong, instead of inciting them to battle, 
 as is evidently sometimes Mrs. Courtney s 
 intention. 
 
 Reginald Courtney is a fair type of a big, 
 healthy, not overly wise young man, who treats 
 the world he does not know with courtesy. 
 The creases in his trousers are in the right 
 place, and his shoes are correct, but there is 
 no sophistication in his face. He is treasurer 
 of a company for mining coal in the West 
 Virginia hills, and there are signs that his face 
 has known the sun. It is not a particularly 
 handsome face, but the body below it is 
 straight and sturdy and tall, and the head 
 above it looks anything but empty. Reg has 
 never had an ache since he was born, and if 
 clean living and healthy ways are factors, he 
 never will. He is one with whom the world 
 seems to have gone well.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 17 
 
 By his side sits the girl who, from her baby 
 hood, has been destined to become his wife. 
 A distant cousin, born into one of the oldest 
 families in the middle South, she has the un 
 usual good fortune to have an estate which 
 even the civil war did not affect, so great and 
 solid and -well invested was it. An orphan, 
 she inherited her whole fortune from her 
 father s father, a canny old man, who had more 
 English than American blood, and who left 
 his entire estate to his son s eldest child, to be 
 held in trust until the heir had reached the 
 age of twenty five. 
 
 Edyth had been given into Mrs. Courtney s 
 hands when she was only five, and had been 
 brought up in the conventions of her class. 
 
 People in Virginia did not call her plain, 
 although an irreverent Northerner, accustomed 
 to the dash of city heiresses, might have 
 thought so. There is too satisfied an expres 
 sion in Miss Smith s face, although she is 
 unaffected and simple in her manner. 
 
 She affects some sensitive souls much as 
 an unripe peach might. She has not gained
 
 1 8 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 the ripeness and sweetness which comes with 
 experience and the contact with the light of 
 the world s day. She is a trifle overdressed. 
 She is only twenty years old, but there are 
 diamond earrings in her ears, and her gown is 
 silk instead of cotton or wool, this summer 
 morning by the sea. 
 
 Reginald, like all fine men, knows nothing 
 whatever about women s dress, but some way 
 Edyth doesn t look just right. He thinks 
 vaguely that after they are married he will 
 get her to go about with him alone and be 
 more unconventional. There are few mar 
 riages made in which one or the other of the 
 contracting parties does not intend to make 
 some future alterations in the beloved one. 
 
 General Courtney sits with his face toward 
 the board walk, looking into the visage of 
 each passerby with that expectation of find 
 ing an acquaintance which never leaves a 
 man who has been brought up in a country 
 place where his own personality is distinct, 
 however much he may travel about this over 
 grown world.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 19 
 
 He started suddenly as a well dressed figure 
 in white flannels and a broad sailor hat 
 lounged along, and then, with a glance at his 
 wife, sat down again. The passerby was ab 
 sorbed in his cigarette, and seemed to see no 
 body through his half closed eyes. 
 
 " Who was it ? " Mrs. Courtney asked. " Any 
 Ellenbro people?" 
 
 " Well, yes, you might say so," the general 
 said, as though he were apologizing for owning 
 the fact. " It was Richard Baylor. Since he 
 has inherited Castle Hill, I suppose we might 
 call him a neighbor." 
 
 A look of superior virtue came over Mrs. 
 Courtney s face, if anything could be superior 
 to her usual exalted expression. 
 
 " I wonder," she said in a casual tone, " if 
 er he is alone ? " 
 
 " He was just now." 
 
 "It is to be sincerely hoped that he will 
 not bring his er family down to Castle 
 Hill." 
 
 " Why not ? " Mr. Reginald Courtney 
 dashed into the conversation with an air that
 
 20 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 was a trifle more than mildly curious. His 
 tone sounded as if he might already anticipate 
 the answer he would receive and was prepared 
 to take up an independent position in regard 
 to it. But his mother felt herself on indisput 
 able heights. 
 
 " I hope, my son, that knowing, as you 
 must, the character borne by Richard Baylor, 
 and the unhappy marriage he has made, you 
 will readily understand why it is not desirable 
 that he should come to Ellenbro and place 
 himself and his friends in the midst of our 
 community of gently bred people." 
 
 " Most of whom are related to him." 
 
 " Which makes it all the more unfortu 
 nate." 
 
 " I can t see what is so terrible about Bay 
 lor. From all I hear about him he is a clever 
 fellow, who has been in the swim of affairs 
 and mingled with people who were of conse 
 quence sufficiently to make a very comfortable 
 income as a newspaper writer. Nobody seems 
 to have anything to say about him except 
 that he plays poker too much. As for his
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 21 
 
 wife, I don t believe Baylor would have mar 
 ried anybody who wasn t pretty and nice and 
 young. I don t see why a nice, young, pretty 
 woman at Castle Hill will not be an acqui 
 sition." 
 
 Mrs. Courtney s face had settled into its 
 hardest lines. 
 
 " I can hardly consider a young woman who 
 was picked up at the stage door, one might 
 say, as an acquisition to Ellenbro and the 
 county. However sorry I shall feel for dear 
 Eliza, I still have my principles my duty 
 and I cannot see how these are to be overcome 
 sufficiently for me to recognize Richard Bay 
 lor s wife." 
 
 " Well, now, mother, you are flying right in 
 the face of all modern ideas. There was a 
 time when an actress was not a social light, 
 but that time has gone by long ago. They 
 are asked everywhere, especially in L/ondon, 
 which you say is the only properly regulated 
 city on earth. They make a point of having 
 actors at the very best houses. The Prince 
 of Wales "
 
 22 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " I hope," said Mrs. Courtney, in a tone 
 which would have done credit to the British 
 matron herself, " that my son will never "look 
 upon the moral character of the Prince of 
 Wales as a model. I am very sure that his 
 dear mother has never entertained actresses." 
 Mrs. Courtney spoke the word as though it 
 was a medical term, necessary to use, but 
 rather indelicate. 
 
 "Is there anything wrong with Mrs. Baylor s 
 moral character?" 
 
 Edyth was looking out over the ocean ar 
 though she had heard none of the conversa 
 tion, but Mrs. Courtney looked at her and back 
 to her son warningly, but the irrepressible 
 went on. 
 
 " Because if there isn t, I think we might be 
 glad to know her. We are pretty well ac 
 quainted with Mrs. Chapin." 
 
 " Reginald, if you have any unpleasant 
 allusions to make, I must request you to con 
 fine them to the hours when you are not 
 in Edyth s society, at least. I suppose you 
 men may act as you please. If you find
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 23 
 
 Richard Baylor agreeable, nothing we may 
 say will prevent your seeking his society. I 
 hope you have too much strength of mind to be 
 drawn into his wretched habit of gambling, and 
 I trust you will remain away from his house." 
 
 " And Mrs. Baylor is to get all the cold 
 shoulder. I don t call that justice exactly. 
 She wasn t on the stage, any way. She only 
 studied for the stage. Plenty society women 
 have gone through that school." 
 
 " I think you can hardly call it the same 
 thing. As I understand it, this Mrs. Baylor 
 is the daughter of an actress, and had a sister 
 who was on the stage for a time, in a very in 
 ferior position, until she made a miserable 
 marriage and died in Paris." 
 
 " Oh, Aunt Martha," Miss Smith called, in 
 a low but excited tone, " here is that lady we 
 saw yesterday. It must be Mrs. Colonel Stan 
 ley ; she answers exactly to the description I 
 read of her in the papers yesterday. Look at 
 her go into the water. Did you ever see any 
 thing so graceful ? " 
 
 Mrs. Courtney put up her lorgnette and
 
 24 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 watched the slim, perfectly clad figure walk 
 like a princess down over the sands and into 
 the water. Her bathing dress fitted her figure 
 like the tunic of a young Greek, and the 
 proud neck upheld the beautifully carried 
 head with a conspicuous pride. There was 
 no timid stopping to dillydally with the 
 waves, to put one foot out and then another, 
 and draw back with a little shiver. She 
 walked almost up to the water, and then 
 with a rush went straight into the heart of a 
 great, white crested breaker, coming up with 
 her face wet, but brilliant. 
 
 She gave two or three strokes with her 
 round, strong, white arms, and made her way 
 out into the incoming swells, and then, as a 
 great, green, glassy wave rose above her, ready 
 to sweep over her head, she put her hands on 
 her waist, and springing with the motion of 
 the water, rose above it, bounding into the 
 air. Her scarlet cap rose two or three times, 
 defying the waves to go over it, and then it 
 went out, a touch of color as far as it could 
 be seen.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 25 
 
 " I should think she would be afraid," Edyth 
 said, almost shivering. 
 
 " The Lacys are a fearless race," Mrs. Court 
 ney replied, as one would repeat history. " I 
 can remember that old General Lacy was 
 said to be the bravest man in the army. He 
 was a second cousin of your grandfather 
 Mason, Reginald. It is the same blood. There 
 have never been any cowards in our families. 
 It that really is Helen Stanley, we certainly 
 must go and call upon her. It would be very 
 strange if relatives should be in the same city 
 and not see each other." 
 
 " From what I hear of Mrs. Colonel Stanley, 
 and from what the newspapers say of her, I 
 reckon she has about enough occupation in 
 attending to the many friends she has now. 
 They say she came down here, where she 
 knows nobody, so that she might have the sea 
 bathing and not be annoyed by people." 
 
 " We can hardly be considered in the light 
 of people. Her own kin ! " 
 
 Mrs. Courtney was rapidly losing her temper 
 with her son.
 
 26 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " She is a remarkable swimmer, said Gen 
 eral Courtney, putting up the field glass, which 
 he considered an indispensable addition to a 
 seaside toilet. It is supposed that he imbibed 
 the idea from reading of old sea captains and 
 their glasses. Most worldly experiences had 
 come to General Courtney vicariously. 
 
 " But, dear me, Helen Lacy, old Bob Lacy s 
 daughter, must be forty, if she s a day. Her 
 mother " 
 
 " Not so old as that, begins Mrs. Courtney, 
 when her son Reginald gives her another 
 turn. 
 
 " We aren t at all sure that it is Mrs. Stan 
 ley at all. People seldom look like their repu 
 tations. This may be one of those very actresses 
 you so despise." 
 
 " I trust I know a lady when I see one," 
 says his mother with dignity. It is not very 
 complimentary to say that your cousin, Mrs. 
 Stanley, looks like an actress." 
 
 " She s not so near a cousin that I feel as 
 though I were exactly casting aspersions upon 
 my immediate family."
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 27 
 
 " And then, too, you seem to have taken up 
 the cudgels in defense of that scapegrace, 
 Richard Baylor. 
 
 It is a minute before Reginald speaks, and 
 then there is feeling in his voice. 
 
 " It seems to me, mother, that we need to 
 add to, instead of detract from, the stock of 
 sympathy in this world for scapegraces." 
 
 And he leaves his mother dumb. 
 
 " Come along, Edyth, let us go off and walk 
 a little. My knees are getting cramped by 
 sitting still," and Reginald gets up and gives 
 his tan shoes a little shake that straightens his 
 trousers, and presumably his knees. 
 
 Edyth follows him obediently. Where 
 wouldn t she follow Reginald ? Her heart is 
 as full of joy as the sea, laughing and glitter 
 ing away off there to the eastern horizon, is 
 full of sparkles. It is reflecting back the light 
 which the indifferent sun is pouring down on 
 all the earth alike, and the sea s case is some 
 thing like poor Edyth s. Reginald is in as little 
 lover-like a mood as possible. 
 
 He knows that he is going to ask Edyth to
 
 28 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 marry him. Of course he is. He knows that 
 his mother expects it, and, most of all, Edyth 
 expects it. He thinks, with a quick throb of 
 conscience, of the stab he has given his 
 mother before he left. He hates himself for 
 his defiant tongue. He knows that he cannot 
 go and apologize to her, because the apology 
 would be but a naming of the wound, and de 
 manding for it a new claim upon the conscious 
 ness, and it is something that must be kept 
 hidden away. 
 
 With his impulsive generosity, he makes 
 up his mind that now, today, he will make 
 amends to his mother, carry out her dearest 
 wishes, and go back to her with Edyth as his 
 promised wife. She will forgive him then 
 for his rude touch upon the family sorrow, 
 the skeleton which can hurt even Mrs. Court 
 ney s pride. Her kiss of congratulation will 
 be a kiss of reconciliation. He thinks ruefully 
 that it is his duty to make up to his mother 
 all she has suffered. 
 
 But what can he say to Edyth ? He thinks 
 to himself that certainly nothing on earth
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 29 
 
 could be harder than to propose marriage to 
 a girl who has been brought up in the same 
 house with you. It is perfectly ridiculous. 
 
 When Edyth, a shy little child of five, was 
 left to General Courtney s guardianship, Mrs. 
 Courtney announced to the world that she took 
 up the burden of being a mother to a motherless 
 girl in a spirit of Christian charity. She openly 
 wished that this child had been a boy, that 
 Reg might have had a companion, and then 
 she said she supposed it was all for the best, 
 as poor Reg had no sister ; the refining in 
 fluence of a girl in the house would be every 
 thing. 
 
 And true enough, Mrs. Courtney did her 
 duty in the way of the world. Edyth had 
 been daintily and carefully brought up, with 
 the best of young ladies boarding school 
 educations. She had been taught art em 
 broidery as the years went by, and the making 
 of famous Virginia dishes, and the painting of 
 china to put them in. 
 
 But it must be confessed that poor Edyth 
 had never done any of these things very bril-
 
 30 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 liantly. She could hardly be said to have 
 any influence over Reg, although they were 
 together constantly during all their child 
 hood. Reginald had never had but one girl 
 companion other than Edyth, and that was a 
 pretty miss of ten who had come out from 
 Baltimore to visit her aunt who lived near 
 the Courtneys. Reginald was fourteen and 
 Edyth was eleven when Maude appeared oti 
 the scene and took Reg s boyish heart captive. 
 She could ride and swim and row and climb 
 trees like a boy, and had a sharp tongue of 
 her own ; in none of which accomplishments 
 Edyth was at all learned. 
 
 Reg was her willing slave until they were 
 riding tournament on the back lawn one day. 
 Maude, on her pony bareback and yelling like 
 a Comanche Indian, galloping down with 
 lance poised to take the ring, found herself 
 almost thrown because her pony had shied at 
 Edyth s white apron, when she sat on the 
 fence meekly looking on. Maude had called 
 her a " spoil sport " and ordered her home. 
 Reg picked up the rings and went along,
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 31 
 
 much to Mrs. Courtney s satisfaction when she 
 heard of it. 
 
 She would hardly have been a human 
 mother if she had not wanted to keep Edyth s 
 thirty thousand dollars a year in the family ; 
 if she had not gently discouraged any other 
 man who came Edyth s way. Not that that 
 required much effort. The American man is 
 not a fortune hunter. He has too much faith 
 in his own abilities, is too proud to take a 
 wife s money. He considers it his prerogative 
 as an American to earn his own fortune and 
 to choose the one woman he wants out of the 
 world to bestow it upon. 
 
 Edyth, with her rather awkward figure and 
 stiffness of manner, had little to attract any 
 man, particularly one who did not really know 
 her good qualities. She always had partners 
 at dances and never had known the ignominy 
 of being a wall flower. Everybody went to 
 the Courtney house, and liked Reginald, and 
 one dance is little to give for duty ; but Edyth, 
 with the handsomest gown in the room, had 
 never been a belle.
 
 32 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 To do Reginald justice, he never thought 
 of Edyth s money. It is hard to think of 
 money in connection with one for whom it 
 has done so little. He only knew that she 
 was good, that she was devoted to him, that 
 his mother would be heartbroken if he mar 
 ried any one else, and that he had never seen 
 any other woman whom he cared any more 
 for. 
 
 Not that bright eyes and a pretty face had 
 no charms for him. He was a young man 
 with blood in his veins, and eyes in his head, 
 and when a gay, bright young girl, full of the 
 joy of life, passed him by, his heart gave an 
 extra throb in the manner that every healthy 
 young man s does at that call. But the only 
 girls he had ever known were those about his 
 own home, and in their eyes, as in his 
 mother s, he was the property of Edyth 
 Smith. 
 
 Tell a man a thing is a fact from his boy 
 hood up, and he is certain to end by believ 
 ing it. 
 
 Reg thought he loved Edyth. He had
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 33 
 
 never known a man who was passionately in 
 love with his wife. The uncles and cousins, 
 more or less removed, who made up the world 
 about Ellenbro all had wives very much like 
 Edyth, good and commonplace. It was hardly 
 in good taste to be anything else. And upon 
 this frame of mind was destined to be embroid 
 ered the acquaintance of Mary Baylor. 
 
 Reg and Bdyth walked along up the board 
 walk side by side. The merry go rounds 
 were grinding out their new tunes put in for 
 this season, but only a stray boy and girl were 
 seated upon the splendid and ferocious wooden 
 tigers and lions, going round and round. 
 Away out at sea the red cap of the swimmer 
 they had seen go in, rose and fell on the 
 waves. There was a memory of her poetry of 
 motion in Reginald s mind. 
 
 " Forty ! " he said to himself contemptuously. 
 "Mrs. Stanley or no Mrs. Stanley, if that 
 woman is forty, I m seventy five." 
 
 Edyth broke into his reveries. 
 
 " Here s the iron pier. Let us walk out and 
 look at the ocean."
 
 34 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 "All right," is Reginald s invariable an 
 swer, and they turn to the right and walk out 
 on the high pier. There is a small theater 
 at the other end, but there is nobody there at 
 this hour of the day. The rows of chairs sit 
 empty like a wooden audience, waiting for 
 performers that do not come. 
 
 There are some young girls who are made 
 prettier by the fresh air of the ocean and the 
 sunshine. The wind ruffles their hair in crisp 
 little curls around foreheads and necks and 
 ears, and gives their hats a saucy tilt that is 
 the acme of coquetry. It brings deeper color 
 into rounded cheeks, and prints a dear little 
 brown freckle here and there on a white skin. 
 
 But Edyth is not one of these. The wind 
 makes her look untidy, and that is all. The 
 extra color that comes is in her nose and chin. 
 Her lips look blue and her eyes are watery 
 instead of laughing back to the sun. Reginald 
 considerately suggests that they should get 
 behind the theater where the wind is not so 
 strong, and Edyth sits down on one of the red 
 wooden seats.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 35 
 
 Away off on the board walk a popular ditty 
 plays an accompaniment. Now, thinks Regi 
 nald, he will say the necessary words. 
 
 He looks out at the little boats which are 
 bluefishing outside the bar, the sun making 
 their dingy sails white ; he gives ear to the 
 music ; he turns his eyes to Edyth s face, and 
 some way his courage dies. 
 
 " How big the world is, and yet how little," 
 says Miss Smith. " To think of Uncle Mason 
 seeing Mr. Baylor here. I hope we can get a 
 subscription for the hospital from him. 
 Shouldn t you think so?" 
 
 Reg isn t exactly interested in hospitals ; 
 like most young men, he thinks of the plea 
 sant things of life, but he has a tenderness for 
 Edyth s kind heart. The hospital is her pet 
 charity, and the mention of it makes him think 
 how womanly she is, and what a good wife she 
 will make. 
 
 " I hope you don t want to go rushing after 
 him now to get his name down on your little 
 book." 
 
 " No, not now," she says. " I want to go
 
 36 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 on to New York with Aunt Martha and get 
 some new gowns before we go back home, and 
 some new curtains for my own room." 
 
 " You love the old house at home very 
 much, don t you, Edyth ? " There is nothing 
 remarkable about this question, but there is 
 something strained in the tone in which it is 
 put. 
 
 She looks at him, and knows that the time 
 has come, and the slow red, not the vivid 
 rushing blush that is so beautiful, conies into 
 her face. 
 
 This moment is the most blissful of her 
 dull life this moment that it seems to Reg 
 is about the most difficult he has ever en 
 countered. 
 
 " Yes," she almost whispers. 
 
 " Wouldn t you wouldn t you like to live 
 there always f " 
 
 It is like pulling a tooth. 
 
 " You know I should be unhappy away from 
 you all." 
 
 And then, there seemed to be nothing more 
 to be said. He puts his arm around her shoul-
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 37 
 
 ders and kisses her and is conscious as he 
 does so that a hair has blown across her 
 lips, and he doesn t like it. He doesn t 
 even know, poor boy, that if that hair had 
 been blown across the lips of a woman he truly 
 loved, and had crossed his when he kissed her 
 first, it would have had a locket home for the 
 rest of its days. 
 
 There seems to be nothing else to say. They 
 both look out over the sea. 
 
 " I wonder what Aunt Martha will say when 
 we go in?" 
 
 "Must I tell her now right off?" asks 
 Reg. Now that it is done, somehow it seems 
 as though it would keep. 
 
 " Of course it is yours to tell," she says with 
 an attempt at playfulness that is unlike her 
 and not desirable. 
 
 " I ll tell you what let s do," Reg said with 
 an air of inspiration. " Let s go into that 
 bath house and get some suits and go in 
 bathing." 
 
 Why not begin right now to start Edyth in 
 his ways ?
 
 IV. 
 
 T T must be confessed that the bathing suit 
 which covers the slender figure of Miss 
 Edyth Smith leaves considerable to be desired. 
 It isn t pretty and it isn t trig. 
 
 She opens the door a little way and peeps 
 out, and then looks longingly at her gown 
 hanging up there. A boy suddenly bangs at 
 her door. 
 
 " What do you want ? " she asks timidly. 
 
 " The gen leman said you was to come 
 along. He s waitin ." 
 
 And then Edyth brought out all of her 
 courage, opened the door and stepped out. 
 
 As they came down on the beach they saw 
 that everybody was looking at a child who was 
 frolicking in the water. She was a tiny little 
 yellow headed baby, not more than three, but 
 who could swim like a fish. There was a heavy 
 faced woman with her who was evidently her 
 38
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 39 
 
 nurse, and who was bursting with gratified 
 vanity at the attention the baby was attracting. 
 The child had a scrap of a bathing suit about 
 its round little body, but she sprang into the 
 incoming waves shouting with glee, putting 
 her tiny hands upon her waist and rising above 
 the breakers as it sprang into the flying spray. 
 
 " She springs up like Mrs. Stanley ; look at 
 her," Edyth cried, forgetting all about herself. 
 
 The child threw herself upon the next wave 
 that came in, and put out her tiny arms and 
 went swimming like a white, golden haired 
 frog. 
 
 " I think that is dangerous," Reg said. "I 
 do not believe that nurse can swim a stroke, 
 and that baby has not the strength to cope 
 with waves," and taking Edyth by the hand 
 he started into the water. But the water was 
 cold to Miss Smith s feet, and she stopped. 
 
 " Oh, Reginald, I cartt ! Oh ! " 
 
 " Yes, you can. Look at all these people. 
 It isn t cold after you get in. Come along." 
 
 "Oh! Ugh! I cannot/" 
 
 People about them were beginning to laugh.
 
 40 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 Reg was a sturdy soul, without a grain of 
 snobbery, but as he looked at Edyth he did 
 wish she were prettier, if she were going to be 
 silly, or more sensible and braver if she had to 
 be ugly. He put his arms about her waist 
 and rushed her into the incoming breaker, 
 lifting her head and shoulders above it. 
 
 " Oh ah ! " she gasped, and burst into tears. 
 
 Then 1 am afraid Reg felt his patience 
 
 going. " If you really cannot stand it " he 
 
 said in the superhumanly mild tone of a man 
 in a real rage but the waves do not wait for 
 arguments ; another one came, and they let 
 themselves be washed nearly back upon the 
 beach. 
 
 There was a shriek almost in Reg s ear : 
 " The baby ! Oh, the baby ! " 
 
 It was the Irish nurse. She was wringing 
 her hands. " Save her ! " she cried. 
 
 There were not many bathers in here, only 
 one or two men. 
 
 Reg turned to see the little golden head 
 away out on the top of a wave. Coming to 
 wards the shore still a distance out, was the
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 41 
 
 red cap of the swimmer they had seen go in 
 far up the beach. It was coming in rapidly, 
 but that baby could never live in those waves 
 until the red cap could reach her. Reg fairly 
 rushed into the water, leaving Edyth dripping 
 on the shore. It was not hard work for his 
 strong arms, but it seemed to him that he 
 would never reach the child nor find her when 
 he got there. The fatal undertow would make 
 short work of that soft atom. 
 
 A great green wall came up before him, and 
 in it, under it, he saw the white baby face, the 
 little arms helpless. He dived, grasped the 
 golden curls, and came up, holding himself 
 aloft on the sweep of the incoming tide, the 
 baby in his arms. 
 
 In another second the red cap was beside 
 him. Such an agonized face, the big eyes 
 wide. " My baby," she gasped. 
 
 " She s all right," Reg said, and truly enough 
 she was. The little thing had held her breath 
 under the water and breathed on top, with the 
 true instinct of a born swimmer, who had been 
 trained to the water before she could walk.
 
 42 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 "I come to your cap, mamma," she said, 
 shaking the water from her head like a dog. 
 
 It was no time for talk. The gratitude in 
 the mother s eyes was more eloquent than any 
 words. 
 
 Reg put the child astride his neck, and 
 together he and the mother slowly swam in 
 shore. The Irish nurse was gone. When 
 they reached the sand and put the child down, 
 the mother turned to Reg with tears in her 
 pretty eyes. 
 
 " You saved my baby s life," she said. 
 
 There was a look in those eyes under the 
 red cap which was dangerous for Reg. There 
 are some women born with a something (other 
 women call it coquetry sometimes, and some 
 times they call it brazenness) which is fatal 
 to nine men out of every ten who look at them. 
 
 No wonder was it that Mrs. Stanley was the 
 great society leader. The few people who 
 had been along the beach were all looking at 
 them curiously. Edyth had only seen and 
 felt that Reg had left her, and had turned and 
 gone up the beach and into the bath house to
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 43 
 
 don again the garments of her everyday walks, 
 to bedeck herself with trinkets and be the 
 Edyth of conventionality except except 
 in this one respect. There was upon her a new 
 dignity. She was engaged to Reg. It looked 
 all sunny before her now and although 
 she was cold, and the coarse flannel of the 
 bathing suit was unpleasant to her skin, and 
 the one towel was insufficient, still none of 
 these could entirely hide the sun for Edyth, 
 on this the day when the fruition of all her 
 maidenly dreams had come about. 
 
 She even laughed at herself for a silly goose 
 for having cried in the water. She would go 
 in again tomorrow. Of course Reg was big 
 enough and bold enough to take care of her, 
 and she ought not to be so stupid. She won 
 dered if Reg really meant that they were to 
 keep their engagement for a month, and not 
 tell even Mrs. Courtney. She didn t see how 
 she could, and then she thrilled all over at the 
 thought of having a great secret like that, 
 that meant so much to them both, all alone 
 with Reg.
 
 44 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 She started out to find Reg. She thought 
 of sending a boy, but she suddenly bethought 
 herself that Mr. Reginald Courtney might not 
 be so conspicuous a personage along the sands 
 of Atlantic City as he would be in the streets 
 of Ellenbro . The sense of lost- identity is 
 one of the hardest lessons that provincials 
 must learn. She set her hat, her most expen 
 sive hat, on her head, and taking her umbrella, 
 went out and sat in the pavilion which over 
 looked the bathers. Just as she appeared a 
 red cap, closely followed by a tall young man, 
 crossed the sands, went up the stairs, and 
 separating with a tacit promise in each face to 
 meet again in a very few minutes, the two 
 went into their several dressing rooms. 
 
 There was nothing of the gallant about 
 Reginald Courtney, but when that merry 
 piquant face under the red cap was turned to 
 him, he forgot that she was a stranger. 
 
 " Must you go out ? " he said. It wasn t 
 every day that a swknmer like this could keep 
 stroke beside him. 
 
 " The nurse has gone, and I must go and
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 45 
 
 dress the baby. She has been in too long 
 now. Poor little tot ! I never intended for 
 her to come into the water at all this morning. 
 I have never had a nurse for her in all her 
 little life before, but her papa thinks she ought 
 to have one so that we may have more time 
 for other things. Just as though anything 
 could be more important than having the baby 
 with us ! " 
 
 " Me won t go out ! " said a small but defiant 
 voice. 
 
 " Sh h. Don t speak to your mamma like 
 that ! " There was anything but severity in 
 the soft tones, but the baby changed her cry. 
 
 " I see my papa ! " she shrieked, and break 
 ing away from her mother, tore through the 
 crowd, a little bundle of pink flesh, wet flannel, 
 and stringy curls. 
 
 Reg did not wait to hear the thanks of the 
 head of the family ; it seemed to him that that 
 was a formality that he could deny him 
 self. With a hasty word of farewell, he 
 started up towards the place where he had left 
 Edyth. She was gone. He went up to the
 
 46 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 bath house, and found that she had taken the 
 key of her dressing room. Reg knew from 
 many years experience that when Edyth be 
 gan to dress, it was a matter of labor and 
 painstaking, and time. He looked longingly 
 back at the glittering, heaving waves, rushing 
 in so coolly and enticingly. Did his eyes de 
 ceive him ? Away out there on the crest of 
 one of them was a red cap. That decided 
 him. In another minute his strong white 
 arms and close cropped head were making their 
 way through the breakers towards that scarlet 
 beacon. 
 
 " I ll tell her this time," Reg thinks to 
 himself, " that we are cousins. I ll talk to 
 her, and it naturally will come into the con 
 versation." 
 
 She was out there all alone, as he had hoped, 
 and the face she turned towards him was as 
 cordial and gay as it had been when he left it. 
 Some way it made Reg into a hero. It made 
 his swim to the rescue of that small girl, and 
 his grasp upon her curls, seem the act of a 
 great man. The glance in those eyes, sweet
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 47 
 
 as it was, seemed to act like a magnifier. It 
 made Reg swell in importance. 
 
 " Where did you go to?" she cried, as she 
 threw herself upon the wave, passively, as 
 another woman would throw herself upon a 
 silken couch for a languid summer afternoon s 
 rest. Her round white arms, slender, yet with 
 dimples in the elbows, and a dear little crease 
 on the forearm just below the bend that en 
 ticed you to kiss it, were spread out, and the 
 water seemed to hold her up and support her 
 upon its heaving green bosom as though it 
 loved her. 
 
 " I went up to see what had become of my 
 my cousin. But she was dressing." 
 
 She laughed. " And you knew that meant 
 another hour ! I am so glad you came back. I 
 wanted you to stay and meet my husband. 
 He might have said some words that could 
 have given you some idea of our thanks. I 
 could not." 
 
 " You thanked me enough," Reg said. " It 
 was nothing." 
 
 " Nothing, to save my baby s life ? It prob-
 
 48 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 ably seemed nothing to yon. You may go 
 abont saving lives every day in the week, for 
 anght I know but my baby ! " 
 
 The words sounded a little flippant, but 
 there was a ghost of a sob at the end, and the 
 water on the round delicate cheeks was not all 
 ocean s brine. It thrilled Reg to the heart. 
 He never stopped to think how cross he had 
 been to Edyth for crying just a little while 
 ago. 
 
 " Did the nurse come back ? " he asked for 
 something to say. 
 
 " Yes ; her father said he would stay with 
 her while the nurse dressed her. She seemed 
 awfully repentant, poor thing, and I could 
 hardly blame her." She laughed again, that 
 merry laugh that seemed to come out for its 
 own enjoyment, showing all the white teeth 
 and the depressed corners of the not very 
 small nor thin lipped mouth. "It is more 
 than I can do to resist that child s pleading. 
 How can I expect a nurse to do it ? " 
 
 " I don t wonder," Reg said, and then he 
 blushed. It seemed to him that anybody
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 49 
 
 would give this woman anything she wanted, 
 why not her child ? 
 
 But the red cap had other occupation than 
 listening to the flatteries of a boy. She had 
 come out to bathe, to swim and dive, and feel 
 the cool waves break over her, and she went 
 vigorously to work, untiring, seemingly. 
 
 When at last they came out, just as Edyth, 
 her hair a little wet, and not so daintily 
 arranged as before, took her chair in the pa 
 vilion and turned it oceanward, they felt that 
 they had been friends forever. There was an 
 Irishwoman, meek of mien, holding fast to a 
 dancing, golden haired little girl, very near 
 them. 
 
 " Your mamma has come out now, I m 
 tellin ye," said the nurse. " Didn t ye see 
 her red cap a-comin up out o the water? 
 She s jest in the house beyant a dressin an 
 will be here the minute an it s glad I am," 
 under her breath. 
 
 Edyth pricked up her ears at the mention 
 of the red cap. She had seen only one, and 
 that was on Mrs. Stanley s head. Could this
 
 50 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 be Mrs. Stanley s little girl ? She turned and 
 smiled upon the infant. That was enough ; 
 in two minutes her bangle bracelets were 
 being closely inspected. 
 
 Edyth s array of bangles was large. There 
 was a little gold pig, a porte bonheur, which 
 set the child screaming with delight. " The 
 pid ! the pid ! The pitty pid ! " 
 
 Just then a lady, in a simple, cool white 
 gown came in at the pavilion gate. Reg was 
 just behind her, looking red and fresh. The 
 baby sprang for her. " Mamma," she cried, 
 " come and see the lady with the pid." Edyth 
 recognized her ; it was Mrs. Stanley. 
 
 " I hope you will pardon my little girl," she 
 said very sweetly. " She wants everything 
 she sees. I am afraid she is frightfully 
 spoiled." 
 
 "Oh, no!" Edyth said. "Let me give it 
 to her. I should be glad for her to have it," 
 and she began unhooking it from her bracelet. 
 There is a hand put out to stop her. 
 
 " I cannot allow her " but the air is 
 
 rent by a shrill wail.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 51 
 
 " I wants th pid ! " 
 
 " Please let her have it," Edyth says almost 
 imploringly. " It isn t like taking it from a 
 stranger. I fancy we are almost cousins," 
 hurrying on, as she sees the wonder in the 
 face before her. Reg has come up, and Edyth 
 turns toward him to second her. " We are 
 the Courtney s from Ellenbro ." She always 
 speaks of herself as a Courtney. 
 
 " Ah ! " and a pleased flush came into the 
 face under the red cap. " Do you know me 
 then ? " 
 
 Coming toward them Edyth sees Mrs. Court 
 ney, and knows from her face that she, too, 
 sees Mrs. Stanley. 
 
 " Why, of course, Aunt Martha knew you 
 at once, and said we must come and see you." 
 
 " I will tell Dick." There is a little triumph 
 in the tone. " You might have recognized 
 him, but I cannot understand how you could 
 know that I am Mrs. Richard Baylor ! "
 
 V. 
 
 A YOUNG girl brought up in the country 
 often acquires a self possession that a 
 city girl of the same age totally lacks. There 
 is a coming and going among the old families 
 who have many branches which gives a 
 daughter of a large connection an ease and 
 tact in dealing with people of all sorts, a readi 
 ness, which the city girl, who has depended 
 on her mother for everything, rarely has until 
 she is fairly launched into the world upon her 
 own account, when the very goddesses would 
 stand abashed at her uplifted head and grand 
 carriage. All the experience had come to 
 Edyth, but her nature had been unfruitful 
 ground. She had profited by none of it. As 
 she looks at Mary and realizes the awful mis 
 take she has made, she would gladly seek the 
 watery depths of one of the great waves, and 
 come up oblivious to her surroundings. 
 52
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 53 
 
 Mary reads with unerring instinct the 
 change in Edyth s expression, and after the 
 first sharp little scratch of mortification she 
 rather enjoys the situation. 
 
 "Oh, yes!" Edyth falters, " I we Aunt 
 Martha knows Miss Eliza Baylor very well. 
 I think Reg, I am sure aunt is looking for 
 us I see her coming," and Edyth half turns. 
 But Reg has brought a chair out with some 
 thing of a bang, and has plainly made up his 
 mind to seat himself and stay where he is. 
 Edyth may defy some things, but, unassisted, 
 she cannot defy that expression in the face of 
 the man who is her lord and master. 
 
 In spite of herself she sits down. Mary 
 spreads her crisp white skirt and looks her 
 blandly and smilingly in the face. Nearer 
 and nearer comes Mrs. Courtney, and while 
 Mary s smile may be bland, Mrs. Courtney s is 
 positively buttery. Her feeling at seeing 
 Edyth and Reginald there by the side of Mrs. 
 Stanley is one of genuine gratification. 
 
 Mrs. Stanley is a woman who is always 
 mentioned with pride by the Southern people,
 
 54 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 who jealously guard the traditions of their 
 section. She has married a rich man of social 
 standing, and being gay and good natured and 
 popular, has made much of her position, and 
 is one of the women whose name and photo 
 graph (or rather the caricature which is called 
 a newspaper photograph) are constantly appear 
 ing in print. She has had years of attention, 
 and the novelty having worn off to some ex 
 tent, she seeks few of her compatriots. While 
 the world of the Northern cities her social 
 world has year by year taken on new ways 
 of amusing itself, has been growing lighter 
 and lighter in tone, has ceased to contemplate 
 itself too closely, and has gone far afield for 
 some of its diversions, the class from which 
 she came in the South still holds many of the 
 traditions of an earlier time. They may be 
 amusing enough to look at from a distance, but 
 to live with them even for a day tries Airs. 
 Stanley s patience. 
 
 Mrs. Courtney understands none of this. 
 Her comprehension is limited to the fact that 
 few people she knows ever see anything of
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 55 
 
 Mrs. Stanley. The opportunity has come to 
 her. She almost hears herself telling her old 
 friends at home all about it. 
 
 Edyth is dyed crimson with mortification, 
 and feels a dreadful temptation to hold her 
 tongue, even as Mrs. Courtney s expansive 
 person turns in through the narrow door of the 
 pavilion and comes sweeping toward them. 
 She feels her own utter incapacity to shape 
 events, and the cowardice which takes refuge 
 in silence possesses her. 
 
 Mrs. Courtney s smile is so effusive, so 
 motherly, that Edyth arises and tries to give 
 her some sort of a hint. She says : 
 
 " Oh, here is Aunt Martha ! She has come 
 for us," and she starts toward Mrs. Courtney 
 to arrest her in midair as it were. But Mrs. 
 Courtney is too heavy a projectile for any such 
 frivolous turning aside. 
 
 " Such a pleasure to meet you here," she 
 says, advancing upon Mary with outstretched 
 hand. " It is so seldom any of us find any of 
 our own people in the North. I am delighted 
 that the children discovered you."
 
 56 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " I am covered with gratitude that they 
 found me, too," Mary says. " I feel like 
 thanking you for having a son. If it had not 
 been for him I am afraid I should not have 
 had a daughter today," and she hugged the 
 little girl up in her strong arms. 
 
 Mrs. Courtney looked questioningly at 
 Reg, and he looked out at sea as though he 
 were not at all interested in the conversation. 
 
 " He saved my baby s life." 
 
 " I am sure he did a good deed for the 
 world. Such a beautiful child ! " Mrs. 
 Courtney sits down and puts out her tightly 
 gloved hand coaxingly towards the spoiled 
 Dolly. 
 
 " Go way ! " says that piece of tactless im 
 pertinence. 
 
 " How much she looks like her grandmother 
 Lacy ! Such a beautiful woman that she 
 was ! You must get the general to tell you 
 of the famous old tales they tell of her. How 
 she was the toast of the county. Your little 
 girl bids fair to be just such another great 
 beauty."
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 57 
 
 There is first a puzzled look, and then art 
 less Mary begins to believe that Mrs. Courtney 
 means to be kind. She is the mother of this 
 splendid young man ; he must have taken his 
 nature from her. 
 
 " I never heard," she says, " of Dolly s 
 grandmother Lacy. Richard has not told me 
 much of the family. I am glad Dolly is 
 going to have an inheritance of beauty. I 
 have always thought it must be behind her 
 somewhere. 1 1 Mary laughs as if in depreca 
 tion of her own charms. 
 
 " Not know " Mrs. Courtney wonders if 
 
 Helen Stanley has even forgotten her own 
 mother. 
 
 Bdyth rushes in. " It is all my fault, Aunt 
 Martha. You did not understand. This is 
 is Mrs. Richard Baylor." 
 
 The dull red of extreme embarrassment 
 takes the field of Mrs. Courtney s cheeks. 
 
 " I cannot see where your fault comes in, 
 Edyth," Reginald says. " It seems to me a 
 very fortunate thing for all of us to have made 
 the acquaintance of Mrs. Baylor here and now.
 
 5 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 I am sure I am everlastingly grateful to little 
 Dolly for getting out of her depth." 
 
 Mrs. Courtney rises, and as she lifts her 
 hand, it acts as a signal for Edy th, who follows 
 her. 
 
 " I really must beg your pardon, madam, 
 for my most unfortunate mistake. Through 
 some inadvertence the children seem to have 
 mistaken you for a relative of our own." Mrs. 
 Courtney looks at Mary slightingly, as though 
 she could never have made any such mistake. 
 " Come, my dear." She puts her hand in 
 Edyth s arm and draws her gently away. 
 
 Poor Mary ! Slights have not come much 
 in her way in the course of her young life, 
 spent among her own sort. The little flat has 
 been her kingdom since she was married, and 
 before that, why, the wide world her world 
 seemed to be hers. With the instinct of any 
 hurt creature seeking help, she turns and 
 looks at Reginald. Men never had deserted 
 her. Would this one ? Her look was potent. 
 
 It was this that had cut Mary Baylor out for 
 the stage all those years ago ; it was this that
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 59 
 
 had made old Marshall, the manager, vow she 
 should have a theater and a play of her very 
 own to play in. It was this that night when 
 they were having a dress rehearsal how long 
 ago it all seemed which went straight through 
 the blase veneer which enwrapped Richard 
 Baylor, cynical, man of the world Dick Baylor, 
 and pierced his heart. It was this not to be 
 understood something which had kept him 
 dangling at the heels of a chit of a girl who 
 hadn t even made her debut ; that kept him 
 buying flowers and candy where he had once 
 bought champagne. It was this that called 
 him back after he had been driven away from 
 the young actress, by her sharp refusal of any 
 more of his attentions. It was this that had 
 made him do a thing he had never expected 
 to do in all his life ask this young girl to 
 marry him. 
 
 Dozens had gone down under it since, com 
 ing up to it conscious of its power. To poor 
 country bred Reg a look like this was like fire 
 to the traditional tow. His heart went like a 
 trip hammer. Edyth, his recent vows, mother,
 
 60 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 everything were forgotten in the rush that went 
 over him with that look. 
 
 Reginald is alone with Mrs. Baylor. He is 
 as heartily ashamed of his family as it is pos 
 sible for a man to be. With all the American 
 hatred of snobbery in any form, with all the 
 enthusiasm of youth aroused in behalf of a 
 woman who seems to be a special point of 
 attack for her own sex, Reg is a champion 
 whom any woman might be glad to have 
 enter the lists for her. It is a tactless and 
 shortsighted mother and sweetheart who have 
 forced him into taking this position. 
 
 He cannot apologize for them. He can 
 only show his own feeling ; and Reg is not 
 the man to do anything by halves. Now he 
 seats himself by Mrs. Baylor with the air of 
 an old friend. He isn t sure that he does not 
 feel easier with her when he knows that she 
 is Mrs. Baylor than he did while he thought 
 her Mrs. Stanley. It is a sad fact that when 
 a natural man a man who isn t a prig finds 
 himself in Bohemian environment, he feels 
 happy.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 6 1 
 
 They ignore the incident that has just 
 passed. There is no trace of it, except per 
 haps in an added warmth in the manner of 
 both. Mary wishes to show Reg her grati 
 tude, and Reg wishes to bring out his own 
 independence and the admiration he really 
 feels for the little woman. He sits and talks 
 to her for an hour, and then when she starts 
 home he goes with her. Mrs. Courtney and 
 Edyth are sitting out on their hotel veranda. 
 Mrs. Courtney slowly waves a big black 
 feather fan in the ocean breeze. It is so cool 
 that it is hardly necessary, but the long plumes 
 seem to give a funereal dignity to her whole 
 expression. Her gown is heavily jetted, and 
 the squeak of the tight silk and the rattle of 
 the bugles make one think of trappings and 
 harness. 
 
 Edyth has had time to make some changes 
 in her own dress. There were so few really 
 good opportunities for dressing in Ellenbro 
 that they missed no chance to put on fresh 
 adorning here. As Edyth stood before her 
 mirror she had dabbed away a suspicion of a
 
 62 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 tear, and covered up the telltale red mark with 
 a rub of powder. She had a lonely feeling, 
 although her engagement was not two hours 
 old. As she sits there on the veranda, she 
 sees Reg, surely her own Reg, coming saun 
 tering, not walking along as though he had 
 been pressed into service and was only doing 
 a duty toward an acquaintance, but leaning 
 down, interested, forgetting everything except 
 the sight of his companion s face and that 
 companion was Mrs. Baylor. 
 
 Mrs. Courtney waved her fan more majes 
 tically than ever. 
 
 "My dear Edyth,"she said, " I hope you see 
 now why I so abruptly declined any acquaint 
 ance with Mrs. Baylor whatsoever. There is 
 given to some women an evil influence which 
 this one appears to possess. I thank heaven 
 that 7 was never such a one ! " 
 
 Young Mr. Courtney was being admirably 
 entertained. Mary had never seen any reason 
 on earth why she should not make herself as 
 agreeable as possible to every one with whom 
 she came in contact. She was like the mirror
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 63 
 
 which gives back smiles for smiles, and her 
 smile was always ready. 
 
 When it was there exactly before Reg, with 
 all its beauty and bloom and attraction for 
 him, he was quite oblivious to the fact that his 
 mother and sweetheart were watching all his 
 ways from the hotel veranda. Indeed, he 
 never knew when he passed them. 
 
 Mary is telling him all sorts of incidents, 
 called up by people who have passed them 
 when suddenly she makes a little dive and 
 touches on the arm a very foreign looking man 
 with black eyes. He is dressed very correctly, 
 and his hair thin to be sure is accurately 
 parted in the center, and brushed down before 
 his ears, in the true fashion of the boulevardier 
 of the last decade. He isn t young in years 
 but no decay has begim to show in his spirit. 
 
 " Such luck ! " cried Mary, with what seems 
 to Reg a disproportionate amount of gladness 
 in her voice. " I knew you couldn t stay away 
 from us for any length of time." 
 
 " Where is my young sweetheart, my lady 
 love?"
 
 64 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 "Dolly? Oh, she is " Mary turns. 
 
 " I though she was following us with her nurse, 
 but it seems she isn t. I suppose she has 
 picked up her papa somewhere. Where did 
 
 you I beg your pardon, Mr. Courtney ; 
 
 I must introduce you to almost my very oldest 
 friend, Mr. Poncet, our next door neighbor in 
 New York. My dear little home in New 
 York ! I hope you are treating it well ? " 
 
 " But it is disconsolate without you." 
 
 An expression of real sadness came over 
 Mary s face. 
 
 " Do you know, Mr. Courtney," she said, 
 " that when it came to tearing up my little 
 apartment in New York I simply could not 
 do it. It was our little home. I felt that it 
 must stay there for us to go back to. Of course 
 it was a piece of great extravagance to go on 
 paying the rent when we were not going to 
 live there, but my husband humored me. I 
 suppose I shall get over it presently when 
 Ellenbro gets to be my home, and I can 
 stand it to have the things brought down a 
 few at a time and then some day I suppose
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 65 
 
 the little nest we made there will be like the 
 bedroom I had when I was a girl : something 
 to remember, but not regret." 
 
 " Madame is very prettily sentimental," old 
 Poncet said with his best air. 
 
 " Where are you staying? " Mary asks. 
 
 " At the Mangate, the large hotel. It is 
 the only one. The only one where you can 
 get a respectable dinner at six or seven o clock 
 in the evening. At the others they expect you 
 to dine at two," and there is scorn on the coun 
 tenance of Mr. Poncet. " Where are you ? " 
 
 " Oh, we are at some rooms about here that 
 one of our friends told us of last year. We 
 go out for our dinner. Sometimes here 
 sometimes there like the pair of Bohemians 
 we are, but Dick said this morning he believed 
 he would go to a hotel. We have no parlor, 
 and now that we have some friends here " 
 her smile included them both " we shall want 
 a spot where we can entertain them. The 
 Windermere, for instance. Where are you, 
 Mr. Courtney?" 
 
 " We are staying there."
 
 66 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " Are you ? Isn t that jolly ! " 
 
 " They are going to have a dance there to 
 night," Mr. Poncet says casually. " And I 
 shall of course expect the honor." 
 
 "Which you shall certainly have. Oh, I 
 think we shall come over there ourselves. I ll 
 ask Dick about it as soon as he comes in. 
 Here I am at home." She holds out her two 
 pretty hands, one to each of the men. They 
 are ungloved, and the action is by no means 
 conventional, but nobody thinks of that. Then 
 she gaily nods, and gives a backward look to 
 Reg. " I ll expect to have a dance with you 
 tonight, too, Mr. Courtney," and Reg lifts his 
 hat and answers that he will think of nothing 
 else all day. He is nearer telling the truth 
 than most people are who make a gallant 
 remark. 
 
 He leaves Mr. Poncet, he hardly knows 
 how. He has a vague idea afterwards that 
 the other must have seen the nurse coming 
 with Dolly and gone up to meet them. Any 
 way, he finds himself strolling back towards 
 the hotel with his consciousness full of Mrs.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 67 
 
 Baylor and that light sense of well being which 
 comes to us when we have the anticipation of 
 happy hours. 
 
 Suddenly there is a little chill in his happi 
 ness. He wonders if Edyth is thinking of 
 going to that dance. Edyth rather enjoys 
 dancing, and Reg has a remembrance that 
 when they go together she is seldom taken off 
 his hands for long at a time. Edyth isn t one 
 of the girls who charms a man into forgetting 
 that time flies and probably other men want 
 to dance with her. A little of the stubborn 
 look which his mother knows so well comes 
 into Reg s face. Why is he engaged to Edyth 
 any way ? Is he ? Then every bit of manli 
 ness there is in the boy comes out, and he re 
 members tenderly Edyth s love for him, and 
 how good and true a girl she is, and he tells 
 himself that he is an ungrateful brute and 
 that he loves her and is proud and glad that 
 they are going to be married ; but he does 
 hope that she will not want to go to the dance. 
 
 After all Reginald is himself. Why, because 
 a man is engaged, must he be tied to one
 
 68 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 woman s apron string? It is all because they 
 had lived down in that little country town and 
 have known nothing of the world and its ways, 
 that a man is socially dead and buried when 
 he is married. He remembers Madame Bona 
 parte s scornful description of Baltimore 
 society, that " men only went into it to seek 
 a wife." 
 
 Reg goes home and into his own room, 
 where he throws off his coat and lies down to a 
 cigar and a novel. He is an active young 
 fellow, but he seems to have enough to think 
 about to supply him with exercise. His 
 mother comes and knocks at his locked door, 
 but he lets her go again without answering. 
 He wonders if Edyth has told her, and he 
 hopes in a bored sort of way that she hasn t. 
 
 At dinner time he dresses himself carefully. 
 Reg and Edyth sit opposite each other. The 
 wind and sun of the morning have left more 
 than one little freckle upon her face, and the 
 pink gown she has put on by no means tones 
 down the color. She looks hot and embar 
 rassed.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 69 
 
 Presently a lady enters with four gentle 
 men attending her. She has the graceful 
 walk of a princess, and her simple white 
 silk gown is drawn up just below her neck, 
 showing a long white throat. Mrs. Courtney 
 sees her as she enters, and turns her eyes 
 stonily in another direction. General Court 
 ney opens his mouth to speak, as he sees her, 
 too, but one look at his wife s face is enough. 
 He closes it upon a bit of bluefish and holds 
 his peace. 
 
 He thinks that Mrs. Stanley has been ap 
 proached, but has probably not shown the 
 proper amount of alacrity in accepting the 
 ready offers of friendship of her distant kin. 
 He isn t so very sorry. She looks nice 
 and then he looks again and sees that one 
 of the men with her is Richard Baylor, and 
 a dim dawning of the truth comes to the 
 general, and he is more devoted than ever 
 to his fish. Edyth sees them, too, but they 
 are at Reginald s back, and he goes on in 
 blessed unconsciousness of it all. 
 
 As for Mary, she feels her best. Every man
 
 70 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 in the room in the range of whose vision she 
 has come is looking at her, but it isn t that 
 which causes Mary s spirits to rise. That is 
 an old story to her. Dolly is with her, and 
 Dolly is pretty, and her husband is there with 
 his calm, pale, indifferent face. All the others 
 are like moving shadows to Mary, in the light 
 of the presence of these two. 
 
 And then Mary sees the hostility which has 
 gone out of its way to haul up its flag against 
 her. She looks at the men with her, Poncet 
 and the other two, old acquaintances, elegant 
 looking men, both of them. She sees that 
 Reg is eating his dinner and has not seen her, 
 and that his womenkind do not mean that he 
 shall. Perhaps Mary would not be a woman 
 if there was not a little resolve born in that 
 instant. 
 
 Poncet lifts his eyeglass and follows the 
 direction of Mary s eyes. Then he looks back 
 at her. Old worldling that he is, he looks at 
 Baylor, and wonders if a man like that can 
 always hold the passionate, tempestuous heart 
 of a woman so much younger than himself,
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 71 
 
 and he looks at Reg. He glances several 
 times at Edyth, but there is no opening into 
 which he can wedge a question about her, 
 and Poncet learned long ago that it is always 
 safe to let somebody else introduce a personal 
 topic of conversation. One never knows 
 what ground one may be stepping upon. 
 
 As soon as possible Mrs. Courtney leads her 
 group up stairs. It is stupider sitting about 
 in a little stuffy room that is a parlor only by 
 courtesy, than strolling off on the verandas or 
 the board walk, but Mrs. Courtney made some 
 murmurs about " objectionable people " and 
 drew down the blinds. 
 
 "Edyth," Reg said suddenly, "let s go out 
 and sit in the pavilion. The tide is com 
 ing in. It is hot here ;" and Edyth, with her 
 face alight, followed him. 
 
 There is an old saying that in every mar 
 riage or engagement one of the pair is booted 
 and spurred and the other saddled and bridled. 
 There is none of the self confidence of the 
 conqueror about Reg, but certainly there is 
 none of the meekness of the slave. That role,
 
 72 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 if it must be played, has been cast for another. 
 Edyth walks stiffly by her lover s side through 
 the crowds on the veranda, and then she slips 
 her hand under his arm. She looks at all the 
 men they meet and thinks how big and hand 
 some and dear Reg is. He was only civil to 
 Mrs. Baylor. A man a gentleman must be 
 civil to a woman who literally throws herself 
 at his head ; but he has forgotten all about her 
 now. They sit down over by the rail where 
 the waves dash in gloriously and the wind 
 sweeps boldly. 
 
 " May I smoke?" 
 
 " Why, yes, of course," Edyth says. 
 
 Reg has been smoking in her face ever since 
 he came home from school with the accomp 
 lishment, and some way this request seems to 
 set her apart from the sisterly role she has 
 always played, and while it puts her away in 
 a certain sense, draws her nearer, too. It 
 thrills the heart that has never known any 
 really thrilling experience. She made little 
 pictures, air castles, day dreams. 
 
 Poor Edyth ! They sat there for an hour,
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 73 
 
 almost silent. Now and then there was some 
 thing, an extra gust of wind, a passing steamer, 
 that called out a remark ; and then the band 
 for the dance began to tune up and send out a 
 bar or two of waltz music. It isn t exactly a 
 propitious time for Edyth to become playful 
 and take a sweetheart s privilege of scolding. 
 But tact is like beauty, reserved for nature s 
 pets. 
 
 " I m afraid mamma has a rod in pickle for 
 you, Reg," she says. 
 
 "Eh?" 
 
 "For staying with Mrs. Baylor and walking 
 home with her. You know it s altogether 
 likely that she isn t going to be taken up at 
 all, down in Ellenbro , and our connection 
 with her is likely to be embarrassing. / think 
 she looks theatrical, don t you ? " 
 
 " I really didn t notice. It s too cold here 
 for you ; let s go in." 
 
 He fairly hurries her up the steps and into 
 his mother s presence, and then he starts away. 
 She stops him at the door. 
 
 " Where are you going? "
 
 74 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " Oh, nowhere ! I m tired. I m going to 
 my room for a while." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 Edyth goes to hers and leans out into the 
 moonlight. She hardly misses her lover, she 
 has so much to think about. There is a con 
 stant procession on its way to the ball room 
 across the court. She idly notices some of 
 them. A beautiful woman, tall, with her silk 
 train gathered up and a big bunch of pink 
 
 roses in her hand, comes out, and Edyth 
 
 gives a gasp. In evening dress, with radiant 
 face, dancing attendance, is Reg, her Reg, and 
 the woman is Mrs. Richard Baylor. Edyth 
 slams the window and goes to bed, her heart 
 one ache and tears of rage on her pillow.
 
 IV. 
 
 . BAYLOR and her party were not 
 long in following Mrs. Courtney out of 
 the dining room. She had things to say to 
 her husband, and she dismissed the men who 
 hung about her with the cheerful remark that 
 she was going up stairs to sing Dolly to " bye 
 low," as was her nightly habit She mingled 
 that maternal announcement with promises to 
 dance at the hop later in the evening. They 
 may have expected Baylor to go with them, 
 but his wife held his arm with a determination 
 that would have done credit to Mrs. Courtney 
 herself. When Mary wanted her husband 
 merely because she loved him and couldn t 
 bear him out of her sight, that was one thing. 
 Then it was that she charmed him until he saw 
 no one but her, and she would not have had 
 him follow her under other conditions ; but 
 when it was a matter of business she kept him 
 75
 
 76 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 as a right. Mary had had few whims which 
 her husband had not indulged her in these 
 four years. 
 
 When they have reached their own apartment 
 at last, Mary turns around and kisses her hus 
 band with her two hands on his shoulders. 
 He looks into her face, and puts his arm 
 around her and says, " I just love you, Polly ! " 
 but it is more with the cheerful, off hand air 
 of saying "It s a fine morning" than with 
 the ardor of a lover. Impulsive, impetuous, 
 spirited Mary wonders sometimes if he does 
 love her at all, and then she puts her head 
 against his and passionately declares to herself 
 that she does not care. He is hers. 
 
 " I have something to tell you : I met all 
 the Courtneys from down in Ellenbro this 
 morning." 
 
 "You did?" 
 
 " Yes ; I went out to swim, you know. I 
 didn t know when we first came out that the 
 young man who saved Dolly s life was young 
 Courtney that you told me about this morn 
 ing. They took me for somebody else and
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 77 
 
 were very civil to me, and then don t say 
 anything to me, Dick, about good manners ! 
 When that old woman whose gown is so tight 
 it is ready to crack from her back, and that 
 pasty young woman, found out who I was 
 they walked off with rudeness I never saw 
 anything like it ! I suppose that is the sort of 
 sophisticated mother you think Dolly ought to 
 have to teach her how to behave and whom 
 to associate with. Ladies ! " and Mrs. Baylor s 
 scorn was an effect that would have made her 
 fortune on the stage. 
 
 " And how did the young man act ? " Mr. 
 Baylor feels as sure as he ever felt in his life 
 that Mary has left none of her social debts 
 lying about for him to pay. He is too indo 
 lent to care about most things, but a slight to 
 his wife in which she had come off second 
 best would probably find him coming up as a 
 reinforcement. 
 
 "He? He was charming. He stayed and 
 walked home with me in their faces, and I 
 have promised dances to him tonight. I hope 
 those horrors will be there, because I am going
 
 y8 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 to wear my best gown." She goes down into 
 her trunk and brings it up. " I m glad it s 
 pink. That horribly ugly girl has on a pink 
 gown, but it looks like a hollyhock by the 
 side of a tea rose in comparison to mine. But 
 pshaw ! " Mary took her pretty gown and 
 threw it over the foot of the bed. " Why 
 should I waste any ammunition on that affair ? 
 That nice boy isn t going to tie himself to a 
 frump. He has too much appreciation of a 
 good thing when he sees it," and Mrs. Baylor 
 looks at herself complacently in the glass. 
 
 " You seem to have like powers of recogni 
 tion," her husband says, an expression which 
 comes as near a smile as he ever allows him 
 self crossing his pale, taciturn face. 
 
 " I have," but as she says it it is at her hus 
 band instead of at her own image that Mary 
 looks. 
 
 But even though Mary puts down the 
 " beauty gown " as too precious to be wasted 
 upon Atlantic City, she is a beautiful woman 
 when she enters the ball room, and every man 
 and woman there turn to look at her. After all
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 79 
 
 these years she still has too good a walk and a 
 too evidently studied carriage not to be re 
 garded as a little different from other women. 
 There is that indefinable something about 
 Mary that seems " profession," that thing that 
 is the bugbear of most women. 
 
 Reginald sees her in the midst of everything 
 as he comes in. Her husband is hanging 
 about in the background ; or at least it would 
 be hanging in the background for any other 
 man ; but Richard Baylor is something like 
 MacGregor : where he sits is the head of the 
 table. He and his wife seem to make back 
 grounds of other people. 
 
 Looking at Mary one may be sure that she 
 would have been a star actress. After all it is 
 personality and charm that makes one actor 
 different from another, whether it is on the 
 stage of the world or the stage of a theater. 
 It isn t that one feels the part more than 
 another, or even expresses it better. It is the 
 person who seems to do a thing in the way 
 we should like to have done it. 
 
 But the women may sit and ask their hus-
 
 So THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 bands and each other if they know who the 
 " actress looking woman " is ; there are men 
 in plenty who want to ask her to dance. Reg 
 has hardly the courage to approach her. She 
 sees him in a moment and beckons to him to 
 come to her, her lips parting over her pretty 
 white teeth. Courtney hasn t been beckoned 
 to much ; he feels it all over him, and he goes 
 over at once. The question that Mary asks 
 him isn t exactly what he expects to hear. 
 " Where are your mother and Miss Smith ? " 
 "They? Oh! they they didn t care to 
 come. What dance is mine?" 
 
 Mary hasn t a program. None of the women 
 has one. She has promised to dance the 
 " next waltz " with half a dozen people. Only 
 a minute before she had turned and looked 
 half wistfully into her husband s face, hoping 
 he was going to ask her to dance it with him, 
 but he stays on the outer rim. Dancing has 
 lost its savor to Richard Baylor these half a 
 dozen years, except for that brief interval 
 when he would have done anything to take 
 Mary away from another man even for five
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 8 1 
 
 minutes. She belongs to him now, for good 
 and all. So Reg seems as good as anybody, 
 lacking Dick, and she says, " Now," as the 
 music comes softly in well timed cadences, and 
 they start off together. 
 
 It seems to Reg that never in all his life has 
 he ever danced before. They are dancing in 
 the dining room, from which the chairs and 
 tables have been hastily removed, but to Reg 
 the floor is perfect. Mary decides, as she goes 
 around with him, that he has the making of 
 a good dancer, but the hour hasn t struck 
 which makes him perfect. She thinks long 
 ingly of Dick and how he can dance, and looks 
 over Reg s shoulder to see if he is anywhere 
 near. 
 
 To Reg there is nothing left. Life has 
 culminated in this hour when Mary Baylor is 
 floating around the room in his arms. He 
 wonders how it has happened that he has never 
 known a woman like this before. He has 
 never believed that they lived except in a story 
 writer s imagination. His eyes fall down upon 
 the little curls about her white nape, and he
 
 82 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 looks at the firm roundness of her neck and 
 gets a little dizzy. 
 
 Mary stops. " Do you know I believe I will 
 go and have an ice ? " and tucks her hand 
 under his arm and goes out across the piazza. 
 to a little room where people are drinking the 
 mildest of lemon sherbets out of little glass 
 cups. If there is wine to be drunk it is not 
 set out in public. 
 
 Mary looks about for her husband, not 
 anxiously, because she is never anxious with 
 the terrors which beset some wives. Baylor 
 has never done anything yet which has dis 
 turbed his wife in the least. She knew his 
 habits when she married him, and he has always 
 gone about his affairs in a way which precluded 
 any idea that he might possibly be criticised. 
 When she sees that he has gone and that Poncet 
 and the other men have also disappeared, the 
 reason is perfectly apparent to her. She knows 
 that up stairs in her parlor, of which she has just 
 taken possession, there is in progress a game 
 in which disks of ivory in red and white and 
 blue are playing a very prominent part.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 83 
 
 " They have all gone off and left me," she 
 says. " I don t see what there is for you to do 
 but take care of me." It is at this instant that 
 Edyth looks out of her bed room window and 
 sees them. Mary looks in upon the dancing 
 again. There aren t many people in the ball 
 room. None that she seems to care anything 
 about. She wonders what she came for ; the 
 light of it all has gone out. 
 
 " Come along," she says. " Let us go up 
 to my little parlor and we will see what they 
 are all doing. That husband of mine is cer 
 tain to be led into mischief, and I am afraid 
 they ve left the doors open into Dolly s room, 
 and the poor child will be suffocated by smoke." 
 
 Reg follows her obediently enough. There 
 is a cloud of smoke already circling toward the 
 ceiling. They do not even enter the room. 
 Mary slips softly into the other chamber and 
 closes the door between it and Dolly, and then 
 comes back to Reg. There is a little balcony 
 outside, and they steal out there and sit in the 
 white light of the moon. The honeysuckle, 
 yellow and white, which the sea air seems to
 
 84 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 foster, grows up almost to their hand and 
 lavishes its sweetness upon the soft air blow 
 ing in from the ocean. 
 
 Reg has forgotten that there lives on the 
 earth another than the beautiful woman beside 
 him. He feels ten years older and in another 
 world. Mary tries to hear the words inside, 
 the words of the game, whose meaning she 
 knows so well, to tell her whether her hus 
 band is losing or winning. She does not want 
 him to lose, because when he does he is just a 
 little quieter and more sarcastic. 
 
 " You will find Ellenbro very different from 
 all this, Mrs. Baylor." 
 
 "What ////j?" 
 
 " Oh, the sea and the gaiety." 
 
 " I suppose from the way your mother and 
 cousin treated me today that whatever gaiety 
 there is I shall not share in." Of course it is 
 neither courteous nor tactful for Mary to say 
 any such thing, but there is a plaintive little 
 note in her voice which robs it of its dis 
 courtesy, and it touches Reg as she perhaps 
 understands that it will.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 85 
 
 His face flushes and his voice takes on a 
 note of deep embarrassment. " My mother 
 did not understand." 
 
 " Oh, yes, she did only too well. I know 
 exactly how they all mean to treat me down 
 there. I am a Bohemian, born into all the 
 heritages of that race. I know what to expect 
 now. I can understand, as though I had in 
 herited that knowledge, too. My mother was 
 a dancer, Mr. Courtney ; I wonder if the Ellen- 
 bro people know that ? She was a pretty, gay, 
 light hearted woman who married a man who 
 broke her heart. Mr. Poncet knew him. 
 When I was going to marry Dick he came and 
 to.ld me about it as a warning. He thinks 
 stage people ought to marry people of their 
 own sort. But it seemed to me that Dick 
 was just exactly my sort. I don t know any 
 body who is more of a Bohemian than he is." 
 
 Reginald does not want to talk about Mrs. 
 Baylor s husband. 
 
 " Where did you live when you were a 
 child ? " He could imagine what a pretty, 
 gay little thing she must have been.
 
 86 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " In Paris. My mother was an American, 
 though. My sister and I we were almost 
 the same age but this cannot interest you." 
 Mary suddenly remembers that Dick never 
 cares to hear about those old days and there 
 are some memories which she has brought up 
 which make her own voice tremulous memo 
 ries that are the only break in her happy life, 
 she thinks. 
 
 " It interests me very much. I have lived so 
 quietly. I know almost nothing of the 
 world." 
 
 "Oh, that s delightful ! " Mary says cheer 
 fully. " You will learn. I have never had a 
 friend who did not know too much of the 
 world. All you ought to know I will teach 
 you. We are going to be friends, aren t we?" 
 
 " It is all yours to say," Reg replies happily. 
 He almost hopes Ellenbro will not come in a 
 body to call at Castle Hill. He sees himself 
 daily walking with Dolly and her mother 
 about the old paths. 
 
 It is twelve o clock when Mary gets up to 
 go inside and Reg must tear himself away.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 87 
 
 It seems as though it must be only nine. As 
 he slips along the corridor and pushes his 
 large and blatant key into his lock, his mother s 
 room door opens and she stands there in a bed 
 room wrapper with a Bible in her hand, and 
 with every air of having just read of the 
 sharpness of having a thankless child. 
 
 " Reginald," she says, " where have you 
 been ? " 
 
 " I ? " He looks his stubbornest. " I have 
 been spending a very charming evening with 
 Mrs. Baylor on her balcony." 
 
 And then they shut their respective doors.
 
 VII. 
 
 TV/IRS. STANLEY was a woman of the 
 world beyond all things. The position 
 that she had made for herself in society showed 
 to advantage the adaptability of the American 
 girl. Brought up in a country town, she 
 had early married a young lieutenant in the 
 army and had managed, by an exercise of her 
 wit and good humor and likableness, to keep 
 her husband at the best Eastern stations. He 
 was a colonel now, all by reason of his wife s ad 
 mirable way of turning trumps and playing the 
 small cards in her hand to the best advantage. 
 It was popularly supposed that she had 
 come down to Atlantic City for the wonderful 
 tonic there is in the air and to obtain rest from 
 the onerous social duties which surrounded 
 her in Washington and New York. But Mrs. 
 Stanley knew better. There was a coveted 
 position that was going to be empty in a few
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 89 
 
 months, and which it seemed to her had been 
 created especially that her big, handsome hus 
 band might fill it. There was a Cabinet officer 
 who was given over to good works and whose 
 very democratic tastes led him to Atlantic 
 City for the summer. It had seemed to Mrs. 
 Stanley a very propitious time for cultivating 
 his acquaintance. A man is much likelier to 
 give an appointment to a man he likes and 
 whose wife he likes than to an utter stranger. 
 Mrs. Stanley feared that the great man 
 might think her frivolous from the stories that 
 he had heard of her. It seemed a good time 
 to teach him better. There were seaside 
 charities in which a woman might interest 
 herself, and Mrs. Stanley speedily discovered 
 which was the object of the Cabinet minister s 
 solicitude, and devoted herself to that. They 
 were in need of money. The Cabinet minister 
 was very rich, and Mrs. Stanley was not exactly 
 poverty stricken, but an entertainment would 
 attract attention and possible contributions 
 with much more success than the simple draw 
 ing of a check, thus keeping the left hand
 
 90 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 from a knowledge of the right hand s good 
 works. 
 
 It was the morning after the dance that 
 Mrs. Stanley sat over her breakfast table and 
 pondered. Mrs. Stanley had no children, and 
 the little table that held the china and silver 
 was dainty and bright with flowers, and over 
 it with the aroma of the coffee there hung that 
 air of confidence that always comes when a 
 man thinks his wife is the cleverest woman in 
 the world. 
 
 Mrs. Stanley was forty, but in her girlish duck 
 linen gown and sailor hat nobody would take 
 her to be past twenty five. She was arrayed 
 this morning for going out. Her white silk 
 umbrella and white gloves lay on a chair 
 beside her, and her big, loose white veil w r as 
 all ready to adjust. 
 
 " Yes," she was saying as she broke a lump 
 of sugar in two that Colonel Stanley s coffee 
 might be sweetened exactly to his taste, " I 
 am going up to the hotel where the Honorable 
 Jacob is staying and get up some sort of an 
 entertainment. I can find somebody, I suppose.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 91 
 
 The Honorable Jacob owns property in 
 this part of the country and he likes to see 
 the quality disporting themselves in the 
 neighborhood." 
 
 " Where are you going to get your talent?" 
 The colonel is good natured and passive. He 
 considers his wife a creator ; that she has only 
 to say, " Let it be," and it is. But sometimes 
 her methods amuse him. 
 
 " Oh, I am going up to the hotel. When I 
 went into the hop last night I heard two or 
 three men speak of a very pretty actressy 
 woman. She seemed to be somebody who was 
 not unmentionable from the way they spoke. 
 I couldn t get much information out of them, 
 but enough to make me think that I might 
 find my piece de resistance right there. It 
 would be a good advertisement for the hotel 
 for them to let us have theatricals in the 
 dining room, especially as the Honorable Jacob 
 will attend. Oh, I can arrange it all. I found 
 out last night that I have some kin, some 
 of my sixtieth cousins from down in Ellenbro , 
 over there at the hotel. It appears that the
 
 92 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 pretty actress husband is an Ellenbro man. 
 Maybe another connection of mine, for all I 
 know. I ve got a branch of my family tree 
 budding into that of almost every other South 
 ern stalk. At any rate I am going over to the 
 hotel and see what I can drum up. The 
 Honorable Jacob looks with favor upon any 
 thing which will assist him to be conspicuous 
 as a man of charity and not bear upon his 
 purse." And after breakfast Mrs. Stanley ad 
 justed her veil, spread her white parasol, and 
 took her departure. 
 
 An hour later Mrs. Courtney and Edyth 
 were sitting on the shady corner of the piazza. 
 Reg had gone up the board walk to buy some 
 trifle for his mother. Mrs. Courtney had gazed 
 rather charily upon the slender, white clad figure 
 that had come up the steps and gone into the 
 office. After her experiences of the day before 
 she looked every strange woman over critically, 
 and it seemed to her that there were not only 
 flaws, but radical faults which would condemn 
 them to the unvisited state, in each. So when 
 the white duck gown and sailor hat made a
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 93 
 
 second appearance and walked straight up to 
 her, she received it with a stoniness of mien 
 which would have overawed almost anybody 
 but Mrs. Stanley. That calm woman held 
 out a hand with an unabated cordiality. 
 
 " It is Mrs. Courtney from Ellenbro , isn t 
 it ? I wonder if you have forgotten that there 
 is such a person as Helen Stanley Helen 
 Lacy?" 
 
 " Indeed I have not." Mrs. Courtney rises 
 with the smile which had been so cruelly 
 nipped in the bud yesterday. This is a great deal 
 better than she had hoped for. She introduces 
 Edyth to Mrs. Stanley, and they all sit down 
 to talk. Mrs. Stanley takes in poor Edyth. 
 She had heard of her, and she had vaguely 
 hoped to find some material here for this 
 scheme of entertainment which she has on 
 hand. She had expected to find her pretty, 
 at any rate. Beauty is supposed to be the 
 birthright of a girl born south of Mason and 
 Dixon s line, but Edyth did not meet ap 
 proval in Mrs. Stanley s eyes. She looked to 
 her like a libel upon the South, whose fame as
 
 94 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 a mother of beautiful and tactful women she 
 herself had done so much to keep up. Mrs. 
 Courtney struck her as f rum pier than the 
 frumpiest, with none of the sweetness and 
 motherliness which she had expected. 
 
 By the time she had talked to them ten 
 minutes, she wondered what she had hunted 
 them up for. There only remained the pos 
 sible hope of their introducing the pretty 
 woman she had heard of. But Mrs. Stanley 
 had doubts even of this. The Courtneys did 
 not look like people who would be likely to 
 be intimate with any " pretty actressy woman." 
 But she put on her pleasantest voice, and 
 asked : 
 
 " Were you at the dance last night ? " She 
 had turned to Edyth. " I do not remember 
 seeing you there ! " 
 
 " I do not approve of these mixed dances at 
 seaside places at all," Mrs. Courtney said 
 stiffly. " You are apt to meet such a curious 
 crowd. So different from the people one is 
 accustomed to." 
 
 " Yes " Mrs. Stanley s smile was bland
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 95 
 
 " that is true. But do you know, it is rather 
 upon that account that I like them. You see 
 people that you see nowhere else. Aren t 
 you inclined to find all sorts of originalities 
 among the men and women who are not bound 
 by conventionalities ? Aren t they an interest 
 ing study to you ? " Her large, soft bright 
 eyes went from one face to the other. There 
 was a little lightening in Edyth s face. She 
 had thought that some way and somehow it 
 might be pleasant to go off with Reg if she 
 knew exactly how, and see and do things that 
 were unheard of in Ellenbro . But Edyth s 
 face was not expressive enough for Mrs. Stan 
 ley to catch the glow. She only saw the look 
 of stony disapproval in Mrs. Courtney s eyes, 
 and I am afraid Mrs. Stanley s tact left her 
 and she felt the joy that comes at times to 
 even the best of us, of shocking those who 
 would sit in judgment. 
 
 " I think that is one of the advantages of a 
 small town. There everybody knows every 
 body else, and when there are people who break 
 away from the ordinary bounds you all are able
 
 96 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 to study their tricks and manners. Now, in a 
 large city, everybody whom it is possible for you 
 to know is cut on exactly the same pattern." 
 
 " A very good pattern cannot be used too 
 often," Mrs. Courtney said, with the air of 
 having invented a proverb. 
 
 " True enough, but the same thing over and 
 over does become a little tiresome now and 
 then ; " and then Mrs. Stanley prepared to ask 
 about Mary Baylor. But at that instant Reg 
 came up the steps. His mother beckoned and 
 he walked over to them. 
 
 Mrs. Stanley looked him over in the second 
 of his approaching and decided that he was 
 the redeeming feature of the family. Mrs. 
 Stanley had not been living among men for 
 twenty years not to know the good, sound 
 specimens when she saw them. 
 
 She stood up and shook hands with Regi 
 nald very heartily. She liked young men, and 
 they, appreciating her friendship and the good 
 time she gave them, liked her. 
 
 " You are just the person I am looking for, 
 my young cousin," she said gaily. "I am try-
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 97 
 
 ing to get up a little play, some tableaux, what 
 not." She threw out her hands to express her 
 willingness to entertain in any way. " And I 
 am looking for a prince for my fairy tale. 
 Will you be it?" 
 
 "A prince in a fairy tale? Well, I am 
 afraid that is hardly a natural r61e," Reg be 
 gan. He was not learned in the light answers 
 to light speeches. 
 
 " Oh, well, actors all say that it is the r61e 
 which is entirely foreign to their natures which 
 they do best. All this is for sweet charity s 
 sake. I know your mother will approve." 
 
 "What is it?" Mrs. Courtney asked. 
 
 " The Seaside Home for Shop Girls. We 
 think it a very fine charity. The Honorable 
 Jacob Leland, the Cabinet member, is very 
 actively interested in it, and has enlisted my 
 sympathies. They send down two shop girls 
 from each store at a time, and give them a 
 week s outing. We want to get up an enter 
 tainment to bring in some much needed funds. 
 I had thought of theatricals." 
 
 " Of course Reginald will do everything in
 
 98 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 his power to assist you," Mrs. Courtney said. 
 "And so will Edyth. It will be delightful. 
 A little play seems to be just the thing." 
 
 " I am glad you like the idea. It pleases 
 me. Some gay, sparkling little comedy. Some 
 thing short and brisk." 
 
 " But I have had absolutely no experience," 
 Reg begins. 
 
 " That s not of the least consequence," Mrs. 
 Stanley says, with that air of taking possession 
 which most young men find perfectly irresist 
 ible in an older woman, and particularly an 
 older woman who looks as much like a younger 
 woman as Mrs. Stanley does. But as he looks 
 at her and admires her, leaning over the back 
 of a chair and facing him, with that look 
 which your truly successful conquering woman 
 never loses out of her eyes, whatever her age, 
 he laughs at the idea of pretty, jolly, girlish, 
 round cheeked Mary Baylor having been taken 
 for Mrs. Stanley. Mrs. Stanley was charming, 
 but to Reg s eyes she was not young. 
 
 " By the by," the mistress of the contem 
 plated revels continues, " I have been hearing
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 99 
 
 something about a townswoman of yours who 
 is here, who I fancy may be of enormous assist 
 ance to us. They say she is so pretty and 
 has such an air. Two or three gentlemen 
 spoke to me of her last night. I didn t come 
 in until late, and it seems she only stayed 
 a few minutes. Nobody seemed to know 
 much about her, but I gathered enough to 
 know she could probably help us out." 
 
 It seemed that Mrs. Stanley was never to 
 be allowed to finish her sentences, which were 
 to culminate with the dreadful fact that she 
 wanted to know Mary Baylor. General Court 
 ney now added his personality to the group. 
 
 He was genuinely glad to see Helen Lacy. 
 He knew family histories that precious few 
 people cared to hear talked about nowadays. 
 Neither did Mrs. Stanley care if he had but 
 known it, but he could not believe that, when 
 so much of it concerned her own immediate 
 ancestry. And as long as Mrs. Stanley had 
 nothing better to do than to listen to his 
 reminiscences, the general would never be 
 likely to discover it.
 
 100 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 There were greetings to be made, and then 
 they all seemed to settle into the cordial talk 
 of old friends, old friends from home. Finally 
 the conversation led back to Mrs. Stanley s 
 desire to have Reg help her with theatricals. 
 She stopped suddenly in the midst of her talk. 
 
 " I cannot imagine who it can be of whom 
 you are speaking," Mrs. Courtney said. " I do 
 not know of any of our Ellenbro girls who 
 
 are here except Edyth, and she " Mrs. 
 
 Courtney looked at her as though she might 
 have left behind her a buzz of talk at the hop 
 last night if she had only had the foresight to 
 go " was not at the dance. I know that if 
 any of them had been here they would natur 
 ally have sought us out at once. There are 
 plenty of charming girls in Ellenbro ." 
 
 " I think this young woman coming must 
 be the one I am in search of," Mrs. Stan 
 ley said, looking with eyes which could look 
 with amused sympathy upon another woman 
 being adored. " I am sure from the descrip 
 tion that this must be she." 
 
 Reg looked, and it seemed to him that woman
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. IOI 
 
 was fickle and woman was vain. Two or 
 three of the men of the night before had man 
 aged to meet Baylor and be introduced to his 
 wife, and Mary was strolling slowly home from 
 her morning bath attended by no less than 
 three, counting Poncet. 
 
 " That must be the Mrs. Baylor they men 
 tioned," Mrs. Stanley said. "Isn t her husband 
 one of our numerous connections? She is 
 exactly the person to help with those theat 
 ricals. I want to ask you to introduce us." 
 
 Mrs. Courtney cleared her throat. " I can 
 not say that I consider Mrs. Baylor an acquaint 
 ance. Nor " but Reg stepped in. "I 
 
 know her very well, Mrs. Stanley. I should 
 be glad to introduce you." 
 
 Our boy was getting independent. Mrs. 
 Stanley rose quickly to get out of the impend 
 ing storm, and Reg followed her. Mary saw 
 them coming, and the faces they had left be 
 hind. If she had had any doubt before, she 
 knew now, that it was to be war between her 
 and Mrs. Courtney. She held out her hand 
 smilingly to Reg.
 
 102 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 There was a calm dignity in Reg s face 
 which set well upon his rather rugged and 
 manly features and frame. Reg was only an 
 inexperienced youth, but he had in a measure 
 been forced into contact with Mrs. Baylor, and 
 he was enjoying his acquaintance with her as 
 he had never enjoyed anything in his not too 
 gaily colored life. 
 
 He took her hand now with every sign of 
 pleasure in seeing her again, and stepping to 
 one side said, " Allow me to introduce you to 
 my cousin, Mrs. Stanley, who has expressed a 
 wish to know you, Mrs. Baylor." 
 
 Mrs. Stanley s face was smiles and her hand 
 was out. The men about Mrs. Baylor had 
 withdrawn into the background; Poncet s eyes 
 were on the horizon. 
 
 " I fancy we might find that we were rela 
 tives, too," Mrs. Stanley said. Mrs. Courtney 
 gave a sort of gasp. This was going it. But 
 Mrs. Stanley was not a woman to do things by 
 halves. When she started out she took her 
 largest ammunition along with her. She never 
 made the sorry mistake of patronizing the
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 103 
 
 people she wanted anything from, nor the one 
 as equally serious, of giving them the impres 
 sion that she was trying to get something to 
 her own advantage. There is a surface honesty 
 of speech which appeals to all of us, and Mrs. 
 Stanley was a past mistress in its art. 
 
 " I believe I am related to half the people in 
 the South, and I suppose the Baylors are likely 
 to be in my line of kin. Any way, Mrs. 
 Baylor, I hope you have Southern feeling 
 enough to help me out kin or no kin with 
 a little project of mine." 
 
 The cordial face and hearty hand were too 
 much for Mary. It was what she had hoped 
 might come to her in the home she was going 
 to, and it warmed her heart. 
 
 " I hardly know what I can do," she said, 
 smiling back, " but it shall be what I can." 
 
 " We are going to try to get up an entertain 
 ment for the Shop Girls Seaside Home. We 
 want to give a little play, just some sparkling 
 little comedy. Say for two." And she looked 
 at Reg and then back to Mary. " Half an 
 Hour Under an Umbrella, or A Morning
 
 104 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 Ride, or something of that sort. Don t you 
 think you could help me ? " 
 
 " I m sure " began Mary, and then a 
 
 little cloud came over the brilliant, mobile 
 face; the thought of Richard and what he 
 would say. He hated any reference to her 
 stage life. He never had said so she could 
 not remember that he had ever said so, but she 
 felt it. The bored expression that was habitual 
 to his quiet, fair face was accented when the 
 old days were mentioned. To Mary the 
 thought of again feeling the pulse of an 
 audience was like the strongest stimulant. 
 But all this she had left to become Richard 
 Baylor s wife, and first and foremost he was 
 always in her heart. 
 
 " I must first ask my husband what his plans 
 are," she went on very prettily. It seemed so 
 pretty and so good that Mrs. Courtney rather 
 resented it. She was not anxious that Reg 
 should see anything which she herself would 
 admire in Mrs. Baylor. Everything was going 
 away from Mrs. Courtney s road any way. 
 There was a dryness in her throat and a burn-
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 105 
 
 ing in her breast which was virtuous indigna 
 tion. That this creature should be encouraged ! 
 
 " Your husband, of course," Mrs. Stanley 
 said. " But husbands are easily managed. I 
 fancy you will not have much difficulty." 
 
 Mary smiled a vague little smile and went 
 up stairs with a promise to send Mrs. Stanley 
 a note later in the day. 
 
 " The idea of that pretty woman not manag 
 ing her husband ! " Mrs. Stanley said, laugh 
 ing, as she turned back. 
 
 " Manage him ! Of course." Mrs. Court 
 ney s voice was full of scorn. " Didn t she 
 manage him into marrying her? Pardon me, 
 Helen," and there was a decided chill in the 
 tones, " but I think you are making a great, a 
 serious mistake in giving Richard Baylor s 
 wife so prominent a place in your entertain 
 ment. He is a man who is by no means in 
 good odor a black sheep, in fact ; a man who 
 has made a precarious living about newspaper 
 offices, and his wife has been an actress." 
 
 " An actress ! Has she really ? If that 
 isn t fortunate ! "
 
 106 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 Mrs. Stanley s eyes were bright. 
 
 " Why didn t you tell me that in the begin 
 ning? She must select her own play." 
 
 Mrs. Courtney retired into offended silence. 
 She did not even say that Ellenbro would 
 certainly not receive Mrs. Baylor. The events 
 of the last few hours had settled that in her 
 mind once and forever. 
 
 Mary went slowly up the wide, uncarpeted 
 steps of the summer hotel. She knew that her 
 husband was lying on the lounge in their parlor 
 with a brandy and soda at his elbow, and a pile 
 of newspapers and a new book or two adjacent. 
 It is a little habit which Mary has kept all 
 through these years to run over to her hus 
 band when she comes in and let him know 
 that she is there, if it is only by a little 
 squeeze of his arm. It is an attention that he 
 takes, as he does everything else in life, with 
 good natured indifference. But she does not 
 go at once now. She steps to the mirror and 
 takes her hatpins out carefully, one by one, 
 and ruffles up her bangs, watching his face as 
 she does it.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 107 
 
 If he had only arisen and come over to her 
 with that little caress, Mary s heart would 
 have been full. But she does not expect it of 
 him, and his eyes never leave his paper. He 
 knows that she will be perched somewhere 
 about the sofa in a minute or two, and he can 
 wait. There is none of the impatience of life 
 about Richard Baylor. 
 
 " I met a lady from the South just now. 
 She said you might be a cousin of hers. She 
 was a Mrs. Stanley." 
 
 " Did you ? " Mr. Baylor says indifferently. 
 "Was she nice ?" 
 
 " Yes, she was. She is getting up a charity 
 entertainment for something. I didn t listen 
 to the cause. I think it was something about 
 shop girls and she wants me she has asked 
 me to take part to act." 
 
 Mr. Baylor hardly moves his paper. 
 
 " And are you going to do it?" 
 
 " I told her I would ask you." * 
 
 "Oh, do as you like." 
 
 If Mr. Baylor could see in the glass he would 
 note a little tear start from Mary s long lashes
 
 108 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 and go down her cheek, but his paper holds 
 him again. Mary does not go to his side. 
 She walks over to the desk by one of her win 
 dows and writes a little note. After it is 
 finished she sits facing out upon the sea, a pen 
 sive look upon her face, a face that was not 
 made for pensive looks, but for gaiety and 
 smiles. Baylor looks up and sees the un 
 familiar shadow. It does not please him to 
 see shadows anywhere. The sun must shine 
 in his world. 
 
 " What are you going to play and where is 
 it to be ? " he asks. 
 
 " I " There is confusion and then a light 
 
 in her face. " I have just written to decline. 
 I thought you wouldn t care to have me." 
 
 " By all means," Baylor says with convic 
 tion. He isn t particularly anxious to recall 
 to the world, and it will be recalling it to all 
 their new world if Mary takes this part while 
 the Courtneys are here, that his wife was taken 
 from the stage door. But in his heart Baylor 
 cares little for the world beyond his own im 
 mediate surroundings. He has married his
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 109 
 
 wife without considering his world, and now 
 she and himself shall not be made unhappy 
 by any such tardy consideration. 
 
 " Do you truly mean it ? Oh, Dick, you 
 darling!" and she rushes over to him and puts 
 her young arms about his neck and her fresh, 
 fair, smooth cheek to his rather worn one, 
 worn a little more today than it was yesterday. 
 
 " I see no reason why you should not accept 
 Mrs. Stanley s invitation. It will probably be 
 a stupid event, as events go, but you like to 
 meet new people, and you like to act. Yes, 
 I should say accept by all means." 
 
 Mary took the note she had written and 
 dramatically tore it to bits. Mrs. Courtney 
 would have said that it was another sign of her 
 shiftless breeding that the scraps of paper went 
 floating over the carpet and were allowed to 
 remain there. 
 
 " Dick boy, you are a darling ! " and she 
 danced back to the desk and wrote Mrs. Stan 
 ley an enthusiastic note of acceptance, a note 
 which caused that lady to lift up a sigh of re 
 lief that so much burden was off her mind.
 
 VIII. 
 
 A ROUND Mrs. Stanley s brightly lighted 
 dinner table sit the Honorable Jacob, 
 drinking his claret and champagne with the 
 same air of not knowing what he is doing with 
 which he eats his soup and breaks his bread ; 
 Mr. and Mrs. Baylor, and Reg. It isn t often 
 that Mrs. Stanley pays another woman the 
 compliment of being her single feminine com 
 panion at a dinner table, but she has rightly 
 judged that Mary would be quite equal to the 
 occasion. Men, in however great numbers, 
 have no terrors for Mrs. Baylor, and awe of a 
 great position she knows not. One man is 
 very much like another in her eyes, always ex 
 cepting her husband. 
 
 To Mrs. Stanley s surprise, she finds Richard 
 Baylor delightful. He can talk and he does 
 talk remarkably well. He looks well at the 
 table. There is an air of exquisite gentle-
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. ill 
 
 manliness about him, the finish of the true 
 cosmopolitan. 
 
 The Honorable Jacob has expressed his 
 entire approval of the project of the theatricals. 
 
 " We have not decided upon a play as yet. 
 We are going to leave that to Mrs. Baylor s 
 experience," Mrs. Stanley says. 
 
 " But I know nothing of amateur plays " 
 
 Mary begins. Mrs. Stanley s husband looks 
 at her. He never interferes, easy as it would 
 be for him to change the subject, by a quick 
 question. Nor does Mrs. Stanley. She de 
 sires it understood that she is entertaining 
 Mrs. Baylor professionally. 
 
 "What sort do you know about?" the pon 
 derous Jacob asks, with a playful smile. He is 
 thinking that you can tell a country girl wher 
 ever you see her. This combination of beauty 
 and simplicity could only have come from 
 Ellenbro . He knows Ellenbro . He has a 
 railroad and a big farm and a place where he 
 goes to hunt down in that part of the country. 
 
 " Oh, the real ones. I was an actress, or 
 educated for an actress, before I married."
 
 112 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 Mr. Leland looks at her hard, and then he 
 says, " Did you like it? It s a hard life, isn t 
 it?" 
 
 " Oh, I suppose, to people who have been 
 
 brought up differently, but to me Oh, 
 
 when I hear people saying it is a hard life, I 
 always think of that poor old French actress 
 who, when she \vas dying, confessed to the 
 priest. When he gave her absolution, he 
 said, My poor daughter ! What a miserable 
 life yours has been! And she began to cry, 
 saying, What happy times those were when I 
 was so miserable ! I am like that about my 
 acting." She has forgotten everything; has 
 forgotten that her husband does not like to 
 hear of those old days, and her eyes are 
 bright. 
 
 " An honest little woman, by Jove !" the big 
 colonel thinks. 
 
 The Honorable Jacob looks at her and 
 smiles, while Richard Baylor idly twists his 
 wine glass round and round, and Reg s face 
 flushes a little. 
 
 There isn t much learned talk. Usually
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 113 
 
 when the Honorable Mr. Leland goes out to 
 dinner the subjects are ponderous. He thinks, 
 as he says good by to his hostess, that he never 
 has had so pleasant an evening, and he tells her 
 so. She sees in his eyes that she may ask him 
 to dinner in Washington in the fall ; that they 
 are going to be friends ; and she thanks Mrs. 
 Baylor, and makes up her mind that while 
 they are down here, and these theatricals are 
 going on, and there will be no consequences 
 to follow, she will be extra civil to her. 
 
 The colonel and Mr. Baylor linger in the 
 veranda with their cigars. 
 
 " You are not going to smoke, my young 
 cousin," Mrs. Stanley says. It is time for 
 everybody to go home, but Richard Baylor 
 and Mary are so unaccustomed to civilized 
 ways that it seems early in the evening to 
 them, and the example of the great man no 
 precedent for any course of conduct. " You 
 and Mrs. Baylor are going to talk about a 
 play. What shall it be ? It must be some 
 thing short and pretty." Mary has been 
 thinking.
 
 114 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " I know a play," she says, " that I think 
 we might get. It was written for a curtain 
 raiser by a young artist I know, and has only 
 been played once to a houseful of critics. 
 They were enthusiastic in its praise. It is 
 short, and there are only four characters. It 
 is a seashore play, too." A dreamy look 
 came into her eyes. " It is a very lovely, 
 touching little story," she added quietly. 
 
 " What is it like ? What are the charac 
 ters? " Mrs. Stanley was looking at her, 
 wondering why she had not been clever enough 
 to go on with her stage career. There was 
 where she belonged. There was where she 
 fitted in. That was the life for her. 
 
 "It is called Alice. It opens on a light 
 house during a storm, or just after a storm. A 
 boat containing a beautiful young woman has 
 been dashed ashore, and she is taken up by 
 the light keeper, cared for by his old mother 
 and his sweetheart. The light keeper falls in 
 love with her. She is a stranger from another 
 world to him, a thing to be worshiped ; a 
 gentle, tender thing to be cared for. To the
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 115 
 
 woman to Alice this simple place is a haven 
 of rest. She wants to stay there forever, but 
 she sees that she has brought discord into the 
 house, and she goes, first telling them her sad 
 story." 
 
 " And that ? " 
 
 " Oh, you must read the play. I cannot 
 tell it. Telling stories is not my gift." 
 
 " I should think it might be," Mrs. Stanley 
 says warmly. 
 
 Mary has been sitting on the piano stool, 
 her bare, round white arm laid along the ivory 
 keys, which look old and yellow beside the 
 pink life of her flesh. There is a lamp with 
 a red shade behind her dark head. Reg leans 
 over the end of the piano, never knowing, 
 poor boy, how much he is showing in his face. 
 
 Mrs. Stanley is thinking. 
 
 " Who could do the other characters? Are 
 they difficult ? " 
 
 " Which are the others ? " 
 
 " Of course you will do Alice and Mr. Court 
 ney, my young cousin, Reginald here, will be 
 the light keeper."
 
 n6 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 Mary nods approvingly. She can see Reg 
 as the Nat of the play already. She looks at 
 him judicially. There is no possible self con 
 sciousness in her. She sees only the possible 
 actor. Reg would hardly be flattered could 
 he know that as she looks at him she sees his 
 dress changed to the rough clothing of the 
 young light keeper, and that she is thinking 
 that he will look the part, and after all, for 
 such an entertaiment as this, that is the prin 
 cipal thing. Amateurs are not expected to 
 act by any one except their nearest friends, 
 and they are always supposed by them to have 
 succeeded. To Mary s mind, educated profes 
 sionally, the amateur is very funny, but she is 
 too politely tactful to say so. And she herself 
 has been away from it all so long that she 
 feels doubtful of her own powers. 
 
 " The character of the mother of the light 
 keeper is a beautiful one. A plain, sweet 
 tempered, simple and yet wise woman. A 
 character that deserves careful study. I should 
 like to try that myself." 
 
 " But you are to be Alice. I wonder "
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 117 
 
 Mrs. Stanley put her teeth upon her lower lip 
 and let her eyes gaze into vacancy, while she 
 thought. " M m I ll send for her tomorrow. 
 I think I know some one who could do that 
 part." 
 
 " Your cousin could play the sweetheart," 
 Mary says, looking at Reg. His face has been 
 burning a little with excitement all the even 
 ing. There is a look in his eyes and an ex 
 pression about his mouth that is new born. It 
 is incipent intoxication, caused by a stimulant 
 more insidious than alcohol. At the mention 
 of Edyth the color goes deeper. 
 
 " My cousin has had no experience." He 
 wonders if Mary is trying to bring Edyth into 
 the play through any motive of revenge, and 
 then as he looks into her candid, interested 
 eyes, he shames himself for the thought. 
 There is no lack of generosity here. And 
 here, too, he begins to have a glimmering 
 sense that there is something beside personal 
 ities considered. Here is the mind which sees 
 a person at his true value in any position, 
 irrespective of likes and dislikes.
 
 Il8 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " I should be glad to coach her. Unless " 
 
 she looks at Mrs. Stanley, " there is some one 
 else." 
 
 Mrs. Stanley is glad to placate Mrs. Court 
 ney by the suggestion of bringing Edyth into 
 the play. She judges at once that the part is 
 small and insignificant or Mrs. Baylor would 
 not have suggested her for it. And so it is 
 settled. 
 
 Baylor and his wife and Reg go home along 
 the deserted board walk. The moon is making 
 its most gorgeous glittering pathway across 
 the sea. The solemnity of the night is over 
 them all. Baylor is thinking that Colonel 
 Stanley is a good fellow, and with half 
 humorous consciousness of his own short 
 comings, is telling himself that that is the 
 sort of man he ought to associate with. It 
 would be wholesome, but something of a bore. 
 
 Mary is dreaming of " Alice." As she looks 
 at the sea she shudders at its loneliness to one 
 tossed adrift out there in an open boat, all 
 alone. She involuntarily grasps her husband s 
 arm a little tighter. He looks down into her
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 119 
 
 face and smiles at the wistful expression with 
 which it is turned up to his. If Reginald 
 were not there he would kiss her, but making 
 a sentimental scene is out of the question. It 
 is Mary who would do a thing like that. He 
 presses her hand on his sleeve a little closer. 
 
 As for Reg, Reg does not know why, but he 
 is happy. 
 
 Mrs. Stanley stands before the mirror in her 
 bed room and takes the hairpins out of her 
 hair, and carefully places in its box that por 
 tion of it which she keeps for daily wear. 
 
 " I tell you," she says to her husband, as she 
 draws the brush over her locks, "that woman 
 is making the greatest mistake. What rest 
 less, silly things women are any way. Here 
 are society women, breaking their necks and 
 the hearts of their families to go on the stage 
 and make indifferent actresses, and here is a 
 woman born and brought up in the life, loving 
 it as she loves nothing else, breaking her own 
 heart to get into a society too stupid for any 
 body to stand. We are all like Bluebeard s 
 wives, pounding ever at the one locked door."
 
 IX. 
 
 "^VT OU ought to know perfectly well that I 
 will not allow Edyth to act in a public 
 hotel with that woman ! " Mrs. Courtney feels 
 vicious. " Of course they cannot get along 
 without her, and I knew that Helen Stanley 
 would see that she could not." 
 
 Reginald has little sense of humor, and he 
 has so fine an appreciation of Edyth s good 
 qualities that his mother s remark fell upon 
 what would seem to be ears unappreciative of 
 the merits of the situation. Mrs. Stanley 
 would think so. 
 
 " The suggestion " Reginald was going 
 
 to say that the suggestion came from Mrs. 
 Baylor, but he thought better of that and took 
 his coffee instead. The play had come, 
 brought down by its owner, who was just 
 starting away on his summer holiday when 
 
 Mrs. Baylor s note reached him; and who, 
 1 20
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 121 
 
 with the easy adjustment of the artistic tem 
 perament, changed his plans in half an hour 
 and came to Atlantic City instead. He was 
 not at all anxious that his play should be pro 
 duced by amateurs, but he was fond of Mrs. 
 Baylor and ready to be good natured, and as 
 she herself was to personify the character over 
 which he had labored, and which he loved, he 
 was ready to hand it over to her. He was an 
 aggressive looking young man, with keen blue 
 eyes, covered by glasses, the rimless, string- 
 less variety which look as though they had 
 grown on the face. His hair was parted exactly 
 in the middle above his rather pale forehead, 
 with not a hair awry, and his mustache was 
 cut straight across, as though an end might 
 disgrace its owner by curling. It was an alert, 
 firm personality, the very last that would be 
 expected to hold poetic fancies, tender fancies. 
 And yet "Alice " seemed to have been dug out 
 of a woman s heart. 
 
 Mrs. Stanley forgot Mrs. Baylor s descrip 
 tion of the play as he was introduced to her, 
 and gave his hand an unconventional grip and
 
 122 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 expected a comedy. She had brought along 
 the young lady who had been sent for to take 
 the part of the mother. She had been vaguely 
 chosen because she had taken parts in amateur 
 plays, and because she was so young and 
 blooming that she could not possibly be 
 offended or regard it as other than a lark to 
 personate an old woman. She looked at Reg 
 with eyes that were a little inclined toward 
 audacity when Mrs. Stanley mentioned that he 
 was to be her son. The rather affected man- 
 nishness of her dress was accented by her 
 manner. One expected her to take off her hat 
 when she came into the room. There was none 
 of the solemnity which the masculine girl 
 usually bears about with her, as though she 
 felt it her duty to uphold the dignity of her 
 adopted sex. She was rather like a jolly boy. 
 When Mr. Covert, the playwriting artist, was 
 introduced to her as " Miss Marshall, the young 
 lady who is to play the mother," he screwed 
 up his near sighted eyes without any attempt 
 to disguise his disgust. 
 
 " Don t you think I kin play with yore
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 123 
 
 doll rags?" she asked with a Yankee drawl 
 that might have come from down East. 
 
 His face cleared at once. " You can talk it, 
 any way," he said. " But how in the mischief 
 are you going to look it ? " 
 
 "I ll attend to that. But say, isn t Mrs. 
 Baylor simply gorgeous ? " 
 
 " That s what she is ! You just ought to 
 hear her recite. I wouldn t let this play be 
 acted by anybody else for this sort of thing. 
 I ve worked too hard over it, but everything 
 she does to it will make it takier. She s 
 great!" 
 
 Notwithstanding Mrs. Courtney s protests, 
 Edyth had come with Reg to this morning s 
 reading of the play. She felt that she could 
 not let Reg get as far away from her as he 
 would seem by going into this work and play 
 without her. She was a little stiff and cold, 
 and the merry chatter of talk about the hotel 
 parlor, where they had gathered, left her 
 isolated. She had nothing to say. The talk 
 of her little world was personal and local. 
 This was personal, but it was not local.
 
 124 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 The reason the talk of people who travel about 
 and live in a large world, seems so much wider, 
 is because it covers more area. Essentially 
 there is little difference ; the habit of thought 
 is practically the same. Cultivation is often 
 only the knowledge to talk about more things. 
 
 Mrs. Stanley pounded on the edge of the 
 piano with the stick of her lorgnette. 
 
 " We have met here this morning to read a 
 play which we are going to produce here in 
 the hotel for the benefit of the Seaside Home 
 for Shop Girls. The proprietor has kindly 
 offered us the use of the dining room and will 
 arrange a stage and accessories." 
 
 "You ll need a kitchen scene," the author 
 of the play announced; "a cook stove, and all 
 that sort of thing." 
 
 " No, we won t," Mrs. Stanley replied. 
 " We are going to pretend that the acting is in 
 the sitting room. We can put shells and things 
 from the board walk stores all about." 
 
 " Pretend ! " And the author sniffed. 
 
 " Never mind," Mary whispered. " I ll see 
 that it s all right."
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 125 
 
 " Mrs. Baylor will read the play." 
 
 It was a charming, pathetic little story, and 
 Mary s voice was modulated to each turn of 
 expression. 
 
 " My ! " said the girl who had been cast for 
 the mother. " I don t know but it would be 
 a better showing to have Mrs. Baylor take all 
 the parts. I m awfully glad I came down. 
 I ll learn a lot from her. Who is she, any 
 way ? " 
 
 " She was educated for an actress," Covert 
 said, as though he were telling that she was 
 the daughter of a king. 
 
 "Oh!" The Philadelphia young woman, 
 notwithstanding her masculine independence 
 and free and easy manners, looked a bit uneasy. 
 " I thought Mrs. Stanley said she belonged to 
 one of the old Southern families." 
 
 " Her husband does, and precious little good 
 it does him. She is nothing of the sort." 
 
 "I thought " but the Philadelphia young 
 
 lady did not tell what she thought. She 
 relapsed into silence. 
 
 As the reading went on and on, Edyth s
 
 126 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 face took on a deeper and a deeper color. She 
 was not, as Mrs. Stanley imagined, overcome 
 by the impossibility of taking creditably the 
 part assigned her, but she was stiff with 
 self consciousness as she saw how it mirrored 
 her own jealousy in the country girl who daily 
 saw her lover going farther and farther from her 
 in his admiration for the beautiful stranger. 
 The suspicions of the girl in the play, which 
 were afterward verified by Alice s sad story, 
 brought into being ugly ideas in Edyth s own 
 mind ; ideas which she was honest enough to 
 try to put away from her. She looked at 
 Reg. His eyes were upon Mary s face. He 
 was lost in the story, lost in the tones of her 
 voice, and a pang went to Edyth s heart. He 
 was hers, but only as this other girl s lover had 
 been hers. 
 
 The story ended, and there were exclama 
 tions all over the room. Two or three ladies, 
 who were to assist at the entertainment, had 
 come in, and there was a soft clapping of 
 hands. Mary s face was flushed, too. It all 
 sounded so kind. She knew applause, but
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 127 
 
 this was different. She felt that perhaps 
 after all she was going to like these kind 
 people who belonged to her husband s old life. 
 Dolly was to be brought up in all this. She 
 felt grateful and happy. She forgave Mrs. 
 Courtney and she turned away from con 
 gratulations and plans and went over to the 
 window where Edyth sat in overdressed 
 loneliness. 
 
 " Good morning," she said with light hearted 
 gaiety. " Don t you think that as we are all 
 here in the hotel, it would be a good idea to 
 study our parts together ? I think you will do 
 Bessie capitally." 
 
 Edyth turned about with a face that was 
 almost rigid. 
 
 " It is impossible for me to take any part in 
 the play." 
 
 Mrs. Stanley was just behind. " What 
 gaucheric!" she said to herself. "That poor 
 girl might have been brought up with the 
 cows for all the sense she has." Sense to Mrs. 
 Stanley meant social tact. 
 
 Mary was chilled for an instant, and then it
 
 128 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 looked a little amusing. She turned away. 
 Reg followed her and never knew when Edyth 
 went up stairs. The part of Bessie was taken 
 by a young girl in the family where Miss Mar 
 shall was visiting. She was not "out" yet, 
 her mother said, but it was Atlantic City, 
 where everything was pardonable except being 
 there and the cause was a charity. She was 
 good natured, and like most people found Mrs. 
 Stanley s pleadings irresistible. All along that 
 lady had thought Edyth too homely for the part. 
 
 " It wants a pretty girl. One cannot forgive 
 an ugly girl for a mistake." 
 
 They rehearsed all day long. The play was 
 to be produced in five days, and there were 
 costumes to be prepared. People about the 
 hotel talked of nothing else, and they looked 
 upon those who had come since the arrange 
 ments were made as decidedly new people, 
 who had no real part in the festivities. 
 
 Reg lived in a regular fever. There was 
 stiffness and discomfort in his mother s rooms, 
 but he had an excellent excuse for being there 
 as little as possible. Often he dined or
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 129 
 
 lunched, and once even breakfasted, when 
 they were going to have an early rehearsal and 
 had all gathered there, at Mrs. Baylor s table. 
 Twice Mrs. Courtney had announced that they 
 would leave the next day, but as there was no 
 response from Reg, she had moved her flitting 
 on again. One night, coming in late, he had 
 found Edyth just coming out of their common 
 parlor into her own room and his heart smote 
 him. There was no ill temper in her face, but 
 it looked unhappy. 
 
 "Whither away?" he said lightly, and put 
 ting his arm about her shoulders drew her back 
 into the parlor. Reg felt gay. There w r as 
 about the sunshine, the sky, the earth, a new 
 glory. He had thrown himself heart and 
 soul into the production of the little play. 
 He laughed at the squabbles of Covert and 
 Miss Marshall, and he had a brotherly feeling 
 for the very young and very pretty girl who 
 had taken the part of Bessie, and who had to 
 be constantly restrained as to costume. Her 
 idea of the dress of a country lass was a gay 
 wash silk gow r n and a lace and ribbon apron.
 
 130 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 The days ran by and the eventful night 
 came at last. A back stairway used by the 
 servants was given over to the actors. Mrs. 
 Baylor is in her room putting on the yachting 
 dress which is to be her costume ; the dress in 
 which Alices husband had turned her adrift in 
 an open boat upon the sea, as a punishment 
 for loving another man. She has her long 
 hair down and is carefully dipping the ends of 
 the strands into toilet water to give it the look 
 of just emerging from the briny deep, when 
 there is a knock at her door. She thinks it is 
 her husband and calls out " Entrez" but the 
 knock is repeated. She goes to the door and 
 throws it open, and sees Reginald Courtney 
 standing there in his light keeper s costume. 
 
 The corduroy, the flannel shirt open at the 
 neck, the sou wester hat, all suit his manly 
 figure and rugged face. Mary forgets her 
 frillery of dressing sack and her hair on her 
 shoulders, and looks at him admiringly. 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon," he says in con 
 fusion. " I thought this was your parlor door. 
 How could I have made such a mistake?"
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 131 
 
 " It s of no consequence. You ll have to 
 come in here any way to be made up. Dick 
 and Dolly are playing ou the lounge. Come 
 along in." And in he goes. 
 
 All over the dressing table are strewn 
 bottles of cosmetic and sticks of grease paint 
 in confusion. Everything is in disorder, but 
 it is a perfumery, pretty disarray. Baylor half 
 rises from his romp with the baby to greet Reg 
 as he sits down to be manipulated, and then 
 returns to the frolic with the child. 
 
 " Turn your face away from the glass," 
 Mary says. " I want you to be astonished 
 when you see yourself." And then she goes 
 to work with the paints and sponges until 
 Reg feels as though his face is being turned 
 into a mask; but every touch of her finger 
 tips sends a little shiver over him. They are 
 very light and quite by chance touches she 
 makes the material lay itself on, but her face is 
 close to his. He can see the fine texture of her 
 rosy skin, and the way her lashes curl back. 
 
 Baylor gets up, and taking Dolly on his arm, 
 goes into the parlor.
 
 132 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " Wait one minute. I want to see if Dick 
 is going out," and she runs after him. 
 
 There are dozens of trifling little trinkets 
 lying about on the table. Reg thinks he 
 must have something of hers, something that 
 belongs to her. There is a little scarlet sea 
 bean locket, the mounting gilt, a trifle worth 
 fifty cents, perhaps upon some long past day 
 when it was a fad to own such a thing. Before 
 she comes back, he has stuck it in his pocket. 
 He feels like a thief one instant, and like a 
 knight wearing a lady s token the next, and 
 he glories in his sensations. Real sensations 
 are so new to Reg. 
 
 He is allowed to look at himself, bedight 
 with the paint which the footlights will soften, 
 better looking than he ever was in his life. 
 Mary looks over his shoulder, delighted with 
 her handiwork. The door has been left open 
 in the corridor only a few inches, but those 
 inches give full upon the two figures standing 
 before the mirror. Some one comes along the 
 corridor, but neither hears. 
 
 " See here," Mary cries. " You ve got your
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 133 
 
 hair wrong." She seizes a brush and sets it 
 right just as Edyth passes half stops and 
 then blind with disgust and rage and mortifi 
 cation at what she sees, goes flying on into her 
 own room to throw herself on the bed and 
 choke her sobs in the pillow. 
 
 When Mrs. Courtney comes in a few minutes 
 later to say in a resigned tone that she sup 
 poses as Reg is to take part in the play, there 
 is nothing for them to do but to go down and 
 see it, unless they want to set every tongue 
 wagging, and she thinks Edyth had better 
 wear her pink striped silk with the dark red 
 velvet sleeves, she finds her future daughter 
 in law in bed with her head tied up in a wet 
 towel and barely voice enough to say that she 
 has a frightful headache. 
 
 " It s all on account of the sun on the water. 
 I knew it ! " Mrs. Courtney says. " We 
 certainly shall leave here tomorrow. 1 1 And 
 then she goes bustling back with various doses, 
 all of which Edyth meekly swallows, only too 
 glad to be let alone at any price. She begs 
 Mrs. Courtney not to miss the play, and after
 
 134 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 an hour s dressing she is finally off down stairs, 
 hot and creaking in her tight silk harness, her 
 husband meekly following in her wake. 
 
 Edyth can hear the band, can hear the gay 
 parties trooping down stairs, and then can hear 
 the clapping as the curtain goes up. There is 
 dead silence then for what seems to her hours. 
 She wonders if it is a failure, and some way 
 that seems to lighten the awful burden just a 
 trifle, and then there is" applause that fairly 
 rocks the house again and again. They are 
 bowing their thanks down there, Mary radiant, 
 because the gift that is in her has not grown 
 dull with disuse. Reg, with her hand in his, 
 and that guilty little red locket in his pocket, 
 is not conscious enough of his state to know 
 that the realization of his love will never 
 come, and is happy. Up stairs Edyth turns 
 her face to the wall with fresh, smarting tears.
 
 X. 
 
 1\ /[" AR Y had looked forward so long to this 
 home coming at Ellenbro . She had 
 pictured in her mind the big, old fashioned 
 Southern house, with its wide hallway and 
 long verandas, and sunny slopes of garden. 
 She had seen places, not grand places, but 
 sweet, old fashioned homes here and there in 
 her wandering about, and she had always 
 dreamed of some time living in one. But 
 Castle Hill is not the home of Mary s dreams. 
 It is an old house, but instead of standing like 
 a stately queen on a hill top, overlooking her 
 glad domain, the early Baylor who conceived 
 this mansion built it under the hill instead of 
 on top, with an idea of sheltering the inmates. 
 Its brick foundation has kept it damp, and the 
 old vines which cling about its walls, and 
 send strong shoots into the windows, give it a 
 vault-like feelin.
 
 136 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 The little station in Ellenbro had not been 
 the pretty country stopping place she had ex 
 pected, but a big, dirty " depot," crowded with 
 curious loafers. There was no one to meet 
 them, and the only vehicle which could take 
 them to their own roof tree was an old coupe, 
 dingy and hot, which hung about the station 
 in rain or shine, its horse drooping and its 
 driver asleep inside. 
 
 But none of these things daunted Mary s 
 happy spirits. She was going home! The 
 old home of Richard, the home that was to be 
 Dolly s. As they drive in at the gateway she 
 cannot believe that this can be the home she 
 has dreamed of. It has been in her mind s 
 eye so long as something so different. As they 
 rattled up the driveway, bordered on each side 
 by ragged syringa bushes and with gloomy old 
 Norway firs bordering the lane, she could not 
 believe at first that this was the place. 
 
 "Well, my dear," Baylor said, leaning out, 
 and looking at the old house. It had bored 
 him tremendously in the old days; bored him 
 so much that he had gone away and left it all
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 137 
 
 all the darkness and closeness and conven 
 tional narrowness ; shaken the dust from his 
 feet; but now coming back it held for him 
 something of the glamour of his boyhood. The 
 world that he had dreamed of then had not 
 turned out such a great thing after all, and 
 now he was coming back with wife and child, 
 it seemed as pleasant a place as any. 
 
 " I ve no doubt it will be charming." Mary- 
 had thought of herself as clasping her hands 
 and exclaiming with delight when she saw the 
 house, but that, like so many anticipations, 
 had faded before the reality. They had gone 
 into the narrow, long, lofty rooms and had 
 interviewed the two old servants who had 
 stayed as caretakers. They were tired out. 
 A chill little wind had come up from some 
 where and the rooms had an odor of mildew. 
 
 Mr. Baylor put his hands in his trousers 
 pockets and walked about the room, looking 
 at everything. It was all so familiar and yet 
 so strange. It had been another person, a 
 fresh, inexperienced boy who had taken this 
 into his young memory, a memory that had
 
 138 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 jostled the picture of these old rooms with 
 strange company since then. 
 
 "What is there for dinner?" he asked the 
 tall negro woman who had let them in. 
 
 " Ain t you done had no dinner? I was 
 lowin to give you a mess o fried chicken fer 
 supper." 
 
 "That s all right. Call it what you ve a 
 mind to," Baylor said good naturedly. " Only 
 hurry it up. I m hungry." 
 
 " Build a fire in here, at once," Mary said. 
 " Dolly will catch her death of cold," she 
 added as she saw the blank astonishment on 
 the woman s face at the idea of wanting a fire 
 in the middle of summer. " It smells musty, 
 too ugh ! " 
 
 She went to the windows and threw them 
 up. 
 
 " Finical Yankee!" Cynthia muttered as she 
 went out. " Throwin up the windows an 
 wantin a fire laid right here in August. 
 Never shook hands with a body, nor said 
 nothin ! " 
 
 Mary s heart was sick with disappointment.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 139 
 
 Presently Cynthia s husband, Bob, came in 
 with a basket of wood and laid a large fire, 
 which was soon roaring up the chimney until 
 the room was unbearable. 
 
 " They are not accustomed to anything but 
 winter fires down here," Baylor said. The 
 wind came tearing down the wide chimney 
 and swept smoke and ashes out into the room 
 in a choking cloud. 
 
 Mary took Dolly by the hand and went up 
 stairs to investigate. The house was an old 
 one, without any of the modern improvements. 
 It had been hastily got ready by the two 
 negroes who had served its former owner, but 
 there had been no careful hand to see that it 
 was made habitable. Miss Baylor had not felt 
 that it came within her duties when Richard 
 had not written to her of his coming. 
 
 At the supper table, where the tall, cross 
 looking woman waited, Baylor tried to eat the 
 chicken and put it back on the plate. 
 
 " When was this fowl killed ? " he asked 
 with suspicious calmness. 
 
 " This afternoon, sir."
 
 140 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 "Just as I thought. Understand, will you, 
 that no fowl is to come to this table that has 
 not been hung up at least three days." 
 
 The woman had been housekeeper for years 
 and had been absolute ruler. 
 
 " You didn t send word " she began, but 
 
 there was a look in Baylor s face which 
 silenced her. 
 
 Dolly, tired, began to cry, deepening the line 
 in her father s forehead. Mary quietly arose 
 and f ook her up stairs. 
 
 "I wants to do home!" the baby sobbed, 
 and as Mary put her to bed there were tears in 
 her own eyes as she echoed the wish.
 
 XL 
 
 TN Ellenbro everybody knows everybody 
 else. In the summer evenings young girls 
 in pretty, light dresses, whose outline holds 
 some suggestion of the mode prevailing in the 
 centers of civilization, but whose detail is 
 painfully lacking, walk from lawn to lawn and 
 talk of the two new topics of interest. Edyth 
 Smith is engaged to Reginald Courtney, and 
 the Richard Baylors have come to the old 
 Baylor place. 
 
 " They say " (how many times " they 
 say " does drop from the lips ! It makes one 
 think of the endless sequences that may be 
 made out of a cribbage hand, by different com 
 binations of the same cards) " that Mrs. Baylor 
 is awfully pretty, and " And then eye 
 brows are lifted. " Cynthia " everybody 
 knows Cynthia " says that you could tell that 
 
 she wasn t quality by her airs." And then 
 141
 
 142 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 the further tale of Cynthia was told; how 
 Miss Baylor had come to call and found Regi 
 nald Courtney there helping Mrs. Baylor 
 unpack her dresses. There was a little grain 
 of pleasure to these young girls sweet, gentle, 
 young girls who were not engaged in the 
 picture of Edyth Smith s lover being fastened 
 at Mrs. Baylor s chariot wheels. They couldn t 
 imagine what any man could see in Edyth 
 Smith, except, of course, her money. His 
 mother had made the match, no doubt ; every 
 body had always known that she would do it 
 if she could. Edyth was a sweet girl, of 
 course, and a good girl, but she certainly was 
 stupid. 
 
 As for Mrs. Baylor, everybody was anxious 
 and waiting to see her. Nobody felt like going 
 to call, just at first. They would all wait and 
 see what would happen. Ladies looked at 
 each other a little significantly, and said they 
 would wait until Mrs. Baylor had finished her 
 unpacking. 
 
 None of this unpacking episode conies to 
 Edyth s ears just now. Mrs. Courtney has
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 143 
 
 heard it, but she is beginning to have a rather 
 uneasy feeling about this engagement. She 
 thinks it would not be well to harrow Edyth s 
 feelings. Young men will be young men, and 
 when Reg is safely married he will be like all 
 the rest. The thing to do now is to announce 
 the engagement far and wide, to bring in all 
 the kin to congratulate, to tie Reg by a thou 
 sand ties of obligation, and to marry him and 
 Edyth at the earliest possible moment. It be 
 hooves her in the mean time to keep Mrs. 
 Baylor from entering any place where it would 
 be likely that Reg would meet her. With the 
 usual short vision that belongs to womankind, 
 she does not see that by this means she gives 
 him more opportunity to see Mrs. Baylor in 
 her own home. 
 
 Before any real hostility has time to show 
 itself, Ellenbro is the center of a small excite 
 ment. Ellenbro is the county seat, and this 
 is the year of a presidential election. The 
 prospective governor of the State is a relative 
 of many of the Ellenbro people, a distant 
 cousin to the Courtneys. He is coming to
 
 144 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 speak, and with him are to be a number of 
 politicians from the Eastern cities among 
 them a man of " magnetism," who has barely 
 escaped the great nomination himself. The 
 town is full full with everybody, from the 
 countryman in his big wagon, filled with 
 straw, bed quilts, and children, to the " cousins " 
 from the great places up the river. Everybody 
 has come to hear the speeches, with the Southern 
 love for oratory, and the town is lively and gay. 
 It is at this time that some enterprising 
 citizeness sees a grand opportunity of " boom 
 ing" the hospital. Now there never are in 
 Ellenbro any sick people who have not rela 
 tives and friends enough to take care of them, 
 and carry them food which the family and 
 servants eat, and stand on the outside of the 
 door and ask in penetrating whispers " how they 
 are today." But Ellenbro is beginning to 
 look about and notice the tricks and manners 
 of other towns, and a hospital seems to be a 
 fashionable adornment for a place of its size. 
 Edyth Smith has given three hundred dollars 
 toward it, and is an authority to consult. She
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 1 45 
 
 gives her voice in favor of a garden party to be 
 held on the day of the speeches. People 
 would come there for supper dinner is served 
 at half past one in Bllenbro and then again 
 at night for ice cream. 
 
 The lawn of one of the prominent citizens, 
 a first cousin of the governor elect, was chosen 
 for its size and central location. Tables and 
 booths were put up all over it, and pretty girls 
 in capes and aprons were set behind them. 
 Edyth took charge of a candy table. It had 
 been her own choice, although half a dozen 
 prettier girls had wondered at her audacity in 
 getting in among those ribbons and boxes of 
 many colors. They had said so to each other, 
 but it had struck none of them to mention it 
 to Edyth herself. 
 
 There are very few people there for supper ; 
 only business men whose wives are interested 
 in the hospital, and who know that there is 
 no prospect of food at home ; and the rector 
 of the parish, and a few old ladies. The 
 young girls behind the tables stand nervously 
 waiting. They have all taken Edyth s
 
 146 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 hand and congratulated her in set terms upon 
 her engagement. There has been none of the 
 girl talk which would have flowed apace had 
 one of themselves become engaged. Edyth s 
 money, and her constant overlooking by Mrs. 
 Courtney, have in a measure set her apart 
 from the other girls. There is a lack which 
 she feels, but she knows no way to over 
 come it. 
 
 But later, after the speeches are over in the 
 evening, the place begins to fill up. It looks 
 very bright with the Japanese lanterns among 
 the trees, and people in gay gowns walking 
 about and sitting at little tables on the green 
 lawn. The moon that had lightened up every 
 thing at Atlantic City is an old moon now, 
 waxing thin, and taking its time about coming 
 up, but the headlights of locomotives and many 
 candles and lamps have taken its place, though 
 they leave plenty of dark, sequestered nooks. 
 
 Mrs. Courtney had gone to supper, and then 
 to hear the speeches, expecting to find Regi 
 nald and bring him with her. She comes 
 back a little put out, with only the general
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 147 
 
 bland and good natured, with his perpetual 
 air of thinking about something else, princi 
 pally his ancestors as her companion. Edyth 
 stands half proud and half ready to cry, her 
 disappointment is so keen. Poor girl ! This 
 is no sort of an engagement at all, when she 
 has to stand and wonder what her sweetheart 
 is going to do next. She knows enough about 
 the conventional engaged girl to know that 
 she is usually for that time, if never again in 
 her life, the center of her little world, the 
 queen from whose throne commands may flow. 
 Edyth is becoming more and more uncom 
 fortable, and Mrs. Courtney is growing de 
 cidedly angry. The band has come up from 
 the big wooden "wigwam" where the speeches 
 have been made, escorting the carriages which 
 hold the heroes of the hour. "See the Con 
 quering Hero Comes" has been exhausted long 
 ago, and the strains of "After the Ball" con 
 sidered modish in Ellenbro are wafted over 
 the lawn. Edyth leaves her booth at Mrs. 
 Courtney s command and begins a slow prom 
 enade about the paths, on General Courtney s
 
 148 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 other arm. They are just turning the corner 
 where the table has been spread for the refresh 
 ment of the distinguished guests, when there 
 before them, laughing and talking, having the 
 very best imaginable time caring not in the 
 least for the Courtneys, Ellenbro , or its world, 
 is Mrs. Richard Baylor. 
 
 On one side of her is a young man, and on 
 the other an old one, both equally solicitous, 
 and equally ready to look when she looks and 
 see as she sees. One is the cabinet officer of 
 the day, and the other is Reginald Courtney. 
 
 There is a whole artillery of anger going off 
 in Edyth s heart. She feels the blood fairly 
 tearing through her veins, but she says never 
 a word. She has a feeling toward Mrs. Baylor 
 that is almost pitiful. She hates her, and she 
 dreads her, and she does not think she is a good 
 woman, but she feels ready enough to let her 
 alone, if only she may be left to enjoy her 
 little world. " With so many," Edyth thinks, 
 " she might let Reg alone." To chide Reg, 
 to send him away, is beyond her power. 
 
 " Why ! " the general begins, but he gets no
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 149 
 
 farther than his exclamation. There is a 
 pressure upon his arm which seems to draw 
 his eyes. There has been telegraphed to his 
 inner consciousness the information that he is 
 not to look in Mrs. Baylor s direction. All 
 three of them stalk solemnly by. 
 
 They are past before Reg realizes who it is; 
 and then he starts he half starts, or he half 
 begins to start after them. But they have 
 seemed so utterly unconscious of any one s 
 presence that his thick masculine sense believes 
 they did not see him. Mrs. Baylor is just tell 
 ing such a clever story or is it just one of 
 her crisp sentences? He hardly knows. He 
 only knows that she is looking up at the dis 
 tinguished visitor in such a way that he can 
 not bear to leave him to take it in all alone. 
 His people have gone on. He will join them 
 presently, and he lingers, listening and looking. 
 
 It never occurs to the distinguished visitor 
 that he is not talking to the most popular 
 woman on the ground, and it is not occurring 
 to Reg that he is not by any means assisting 
 Mrs. Baylor s popularity. The distinguished
 
 150 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 visitor knows a pretty woman when he sees 
 one. He has heard that this one is a Baylor, 
 and has immediately asked for an introduction 
 to her. Reg has been standing there, and as 
 he knows her, and no one else does, it has been 
 for him to offer to present the guest. Ten 
 minutes later, Mary is walking about the lawn 
 on the arm of the guest of the city, with all 
 Ellenbro looking on.
 
 XII. 
 
 TV/TR. BAYLOR had stood looking about 
 him after the distinguished visitor had 
 been introduced to his wife and had shaken 
 his own hand with the firm and cordial clasp 
 of the politician. The whole thing rather 
 bored him. He had come because he had 
 within him the determination to show people 
 that his wife had no shrinking in regard to her 
 new position ; that he was proud of her and meant 
 to sustain the place to which she was entitled. 
 Then, too, the sight of Ellenbro society was 
 a comedy to him. He thought several times, 
 as he had often thought in the theaters he 
 frequented, that it was a comedy whose color 
 ing and setting could be changed to advantage. 
 Baylor had ideas of playwriting himself. It 
 was in the vague and desultory studies that he 
 was making for that play which never was and 
 never would be written, that he first met Mary. 
 151
 
 152 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " The material is here, I suppose. Now 
 there is a figure " Baylor put on his eye 
 glasses and looked again. Then he took them 
 off, and stood fumbling with them while his 
 wife talked, with a queer, abstracted smile on 
 his impassive face. Then he put them up and 
 went slowly across the lawn. 
 
 Standing by a tree and talking to two or 
 three old ladies, with a look of interest upon 
 her blonde face, was a woman past her first 
 youth, but with a certain daintiness that would 
 always be charming. She was very simply 
 gowned, in the usual Ellenbro cut of garments, 
 but while there was none of that elusive quality 
 called style, of which Mary Baylor owned such 
 an abundance, there was a sweetness of de 
 meanor that seemed to make up for any lack 
 of purely material things. Her hair was too 
 light to show any hint of gray, and there was 
 almost a virginal look in her eyes. Richard 
 Baylor stopped before her. She gave a little 
 start, the color flashing up in her smooth 
 cheeks, and impulsively her hand went out to 
 meet his.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 153 
 
 "How do you do" there was the most 
 trifling pause " Mr. Baylor ? It is a pleasure 
 to see an old friend after all these years." The 
 voice was as silky as the hair. 
 
 The smile was still on Baylor s face. " It 
 seems like yesterday," he said. The heads of 
 the two old ladies were almost together, and 
 their black gloved fingers touched each other 
 under the lace of their capes. They remembered 
 when Dick Baylor and Nannie Vance were 
 boy and girl sweethearts. It only seemed like 
 yesterday; and here was she, a widow these 
 half dozen years, and Dick Baylor just home 
 with his young wife. 
 
 It was of this young wife that Mrs. Rogers 
 spoke at once. She was not the woman to 
 ignore any of the minor conventionalities. "I 
 hope you will introduce me to Mrs. Baylor. 
 I see she is making quite an impression upon 
 our great man. She is very pretty. I be 
 lieve " she looked up and laughed with an 
 infantile glance and a glimpse of little, white 
 teeth " you always liked pretty women." 
 
 " Yes," Baylor said, still with that smile.
 
 154 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 "And clever? You always liked clever 
 women, too." 
 
 He had never given much thought to the 
 question whether Mary was clever or not. He 
 never cared. In his heart he rather thought 
 she was, but in his mind he rather thought she 
 wasn t. Clever yes, for her world, but hardly 
 for this one. 
 
 But Mrs. Rogers was clever. One was 
 never allowed to forget that fact. She had 
 been clever in her soft, purring way when she 
 had said good by to Dick Baylor, the rather 
 erratic boy, and married Mr. Rogers, who 
 owned the large factory across the river. Dick 
 had carried off his disappointment if he felt 
 any so easily that in Ellenbro , where women 
 make public opinion, and where they are loath 
 to let another woman have one sweetheart of 
 her own, much less two, he was never looked 
 upon as a jilted man. It would have made little 
 difference to him, as the verdict of Ellenbro 
 was of small consequence one way or another. 
 
 Now, when he saw Mrs. Rogers looking at 
 him with Nannie Vance s old manner, there
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 155 
 
 was no wounded vanity to stand in the way of 
 his greeting. He was honestly glad to look 
 over this almost unchanged page out of his old 
 life. To be sure, he had forgotten it almost 
 entirely. Nannie Vance had been no factor in 
 his home coming, but he accepted, in his usual 
 lazy fashion, the goods that the gods sent. 
 
 " I never liked a stupid woman, surely. I 
 never knew many." He looked about the 
 grounds. Many of the faces were those he had 
 seen from infancy, and there was little change 
 to his eyes. There was some dust in them, 
 perhaps, from years and indifference, and he 
 hardly saw things as clearly as he once had 
 seen them. Age is after all a mere matter of 
 comparison. 
 
 " No, you never knew Ellenbro very well," 
 Mrs. Rogers said sedately. " You never 
 would. And have you come back to the old 
 place to live?" 
 
 It was all the quietest of talk. 
 
 Mary, meanwhile, walked about the lawn 
 with Reginald and the guest. The guest of 
 the hour walking with as pretty and charming
 
 156 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 a woman as Mrs. Baylor, naturally formed a 
 sort of nucleus. Gentlemen came up to speak 
 to the honorable, and stayed to talk to the 
 newcomer. It was all so gay and pleasant. 
 She looked around at the others who walked 
 and sat about, and she saw the glances that 
 came her way. She also saw that she wore the 
 only gown there whose outline was modish. 
 In Mary there were, and always would be, the 
 instincts of the actress. An audience keyed 
 her up. She played to it as unconsciously 
 as a flower opens to the sunlight. She felt the 
 glances and the comments that were all about 
 her, and her face took on its merriest lines and 
 her voice its gayest notes. 
 
 It has not escaped her keen vision that Mrs. 
 Courtney and Edyth have gone by with un 
 seeing eyes. There has been a little color that 
 has grown warm in her cheeks as she sees it. 
 She wants to turn to Reg and tell him to go 
 back to his own people; and then she blames 
 herself for uncharitableness. How can the 
 boy help that his people are illbred and stiff? 
 She knows that it must mortify him, and
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 157 
 
 she gives him an extra kind look to make up 
 for it. 
 
 There is nothing about Mary to indicate her 
 theatrical origin. Her thin, crisp gown with 
 its little bows and rosettes of ribbon, has no 
 theatrical cut, with all its look of vogue. Her 
 dark, smooth hair has no eccentric quirks of 
 dressing, and her smooth, almost childlike skin 
 is innocent of any aids to freshness. Ellenbro 
 takes refuge in remembering Mrs. Courtney s 
 report from Atlantic City and the story of 
 Miss Baylor s morning call. And then well, 
 there must be a something that men recognize. 
 
 " How did he know that she was that sort 
 of person?" one matron asks another, indicat 
 ing Mary and the distinguished visitor. "He 
 wanted to be introduced to her at once. He 
 recognized the difference" 
 
 " He probably knew her in New York," the 
 other said cynically. " And, any way, he has 
 seen enough of the world to classify." 
 
 In one of her turns Mary catches a glimpse 
 of the face she is always looking for. She 
 isn t a jealous woman. She never has been a
 
 158 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 jealous woman. She has always seen her hus 
 band turn wearily away from women s society. 
 She has seen him put on his stillest face of 
 weariness when sometimes one came their 
 way, and she has taken no thought that her 
 peace of mind depended in a great measure 
 upon this. 
 
 There is a generous, lavish heart in Mary, 
 but that very lavishness is an outcome of the 
 rapid pulse that makes her claim her own. It 
 had been long since she had seen on Richard 
 Baylor s face just that look of interest. In an 
 instant everything is forgotten except the 
 little gnawing pain that springs out and 
 startles her. With a natural impulse she 
 stats toward her husband, and then, for the 
 first time since she has been his wife, she draws 
 back. 
 
 Cousin James Maclntyre had spoken kindly 
 to Edyth, with his eyes everywhere and his 
 palm ready to clasp every other, and then had 
 forgotten all about her. 
 
 " I think," Edyth suggested, " that we had 
 better go home."
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 159 
 
 " No," Mrs. Courtney said firmly. " We are 
 not going home yet." There was a firm set 
 about her mouth. She had in view the social 
 demolition of this troublesome young woman. 
 " Excessively bad taste to come and force her 
 self where she was not invited," she added. 
 
 " But nobody was invited, were they, my 
 dear?" It was seldom the general went be 
 yond boundaries well known to him. 
 
 " That is exactly the bad taste. They should 
 have waited to make their appearance at some 
 thing to which invitations were issued." 
 
 " And to which they would not have been 
 asked." 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 The general hadn t much sense of humor, or 
 he would never, even in callowest youth, have 
 married Mrs. Courtney; but there is a little 
 line of smile under his mustache a line that 
 fades out in loneliness, having no companion 
 gleam. 
 
 The great guest is reminded that there is a 
 supper to be eaten and that people are waiting 
 for him, and he goes off reluctantly, hoping to
 
 160 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 see Mrs. Baylor very soon again. Reg and 
 Mary are left alone, she a trifle out of time. 
 
 " It is a lovely night," Reg says, with start 
 ling originality. 
 
 "No. Is it? I hadn t thought so. I be 
 lieve it is going to rain. It is surely time to 
 go home." 
 
 Everything has grown stale and stupid in 
 these last minutes. Mary looks about again, 
 and sees nothing of her husband. There are 
 so many dark little nooks about the grounds. 
 She has not sufficient knowledge of the real 
 social world to know that her husband and 
 Mrs. Rogers would be as little likely to seek one 
 of those secluded spots, as to dance a fandango 
 on the green. 
 
 They walk on and on. Reginald feels the 
 chill that has come into the atmosphere, and 
 instead of finding Mrs. Baylor stupid, as he 
 would be likely to find any other woman 
 under the circumstances, he chides himself for 
 his inability to entertain her. The band plays 
 gay music, and she stops and listens, a soft 
 little look in her face. There is one old tune,
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 161 
 
 the " My Queen " waltz, that has seemed to 
 pulse and throb through so much of her life. 
 The orchestra outside was playing it the night 
 she met Richard, and the band is playing it 
 now. She stops Reg where they can hear it, 
 perfectly oblivious of the fact that around and 
 about her is a critical throng, and that the 
 Courtneys are looking her over. Reg has 
 grown reckless. He doesn t care the very least 
 in the world. With all the doggedness that is 
 in him he has enrolled himself in the ranks of 
 Mrs. Baylor s friends, and he means to stand 
 by her. It looks such a manly and sweet and 
 simple thing to do. The duty that he owes 
 to Edyth is entirely lost sight of. 
 
 It is a curious phenomenon in the brain of 
 man, that when he is in love (oh, Reg, you 
 have not named it, but the rest of us have !) 
 he has a single vision. He can see nothing 
 whatever that does not concern the object of 
 his affections. She is the one center toward 
 which all his actions radiate. It seems to him 
 right and just that he should take up Mrs. 
 Baylor s cause and fight it out to the end.
 
 1 62 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 After all, instinct is the very strongest force 
 that is in us. Every action that is of conse 
 quence is bred by it. We may civilize our 
 emotions, but they arise up and break their 
 bonds and laugh at us, in any crisis. Nature 
 is the great guide who whips us all into line, 
 and who scorns the puny laws of men. 
 
 " But," Mrs. Rogers is saying over on the 
 other side, where she and Baylor still stand 
 idly talking, " there is your wife. I want to 
 meet her." She says it with an air of conde 
 scension which rather amuses Baylor than 
 otherwise. 
 
 " Certainly, Mrs. Baylor will be delighted ; " 
 and he offers his arm. 
 
 They are all drifting down in front of Mrs. 
 Courtney, where she sits in august majesty and 
 a stiff and provincial black silk, Edyth and 
 the general keeping her company. It is at this 
 especially and particularly inopportune mo 
 ment that Cousin James Maclntyre leaves his 
 supper and has a flash of memory. He has 
 heard of Reg s engagement, and he has not 
 congratulated him. Of course this pretty
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 163 
 
 woman must be the betrothed. With the 
 utmost desire to make himself agreeable he 
 walks over to Reg and Mrs. Baylor, declines 
 to be introduced to his "almost cousin," and 
 hilariously congratulates Reg upon his ap 
 proaching marriage with Mary Baylor. And 
 Edyth sits and hears it all ! 
 
 The offense is by no means palliated by the 
 fact that Mrs. Rogers and Richard Baylor also 
 hear it, and seem to consider it most amusing. 
 Mary s face is her own sweet one again at the 
 approach of her husband, and while her pretty 
 cheeks flush a little, she too enjoys the joke. 
 Reginald s emotion goes deeper than any one 
 dreams. Until now his feeling for Mrs. Bay 
 lor has been vague. Suddenly the wild thought 
 of the " might have been " flashes through his 
 mind, leaving him pale, with a flutter about 
 his heart. 
 
 Mrs. Rogers stopped and said her pleasant 
 words to the wife of her old sweetheart, and 
 invited her to drive home in her carriage. Reg 
 put Mrs. Baylor in and then went back to his 
 legitimate affections.
 
 1 64 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 As Mary and her husband let themselves in 
 at their own door, so different from the little 
 entrance to their flat in New York, and groped 
 their way about through the shadows which 
 the kerosene lamp threw into the gloomy 
 corners of the dark hall, she suddenly stopped 
 and put her hand upon the lapel of his coat. 
 He turned about, and she looked so eager, so 
 pretty, so anxious, out of all those black shad 
 ows, that he promptly kissed her. 
 
 "Dick," she said, "who is Mrs. Rogers?" 
 
 " Mrs. Rogers? Oh, she was a girl I used 
 to know, long ago. Her name was Nannie 
 Vance. She married a man old enough to 
 be her father, and he died a few years ago." 
 
 " She is in love with you." 
 
 " Polly, my dear, if I listened to you, I should 
 be the most conceited man on this earth." 
 
 " You are almost," Polly said, laughing. 
 
 Baylor picked up a package which was 
 lying on the spindled legged card table in the 
 hall. " Here is our mail. One from Poncet, and 
 hello ! A letter for you that looks as though 
 some of your charity people had written it."
 
 XIII. 
 
 was little sleep for Edyth that 
 night. She turned her pillow again and 
 again. She felt years older than she had felt 
 a month ago. She almost wished with tears 
 falling down her cheeks and dropping, as is 
 the way with easily shed tears, in round 
 splashes upon the white pillow case that she 
 
 had never become engaged to Reg. She made 
 
 j> 
 
 up her mind that she would break with him 
 at once, and let him go and flirt with his horrid 
 married woman. 
 
 And then she realized that that wouldn t 
 mend the business at all. Reginald, by ask 
 ing her to marry him, had put into form a 
 something that she could not analyze. It was 
 the sense of possession. She felt that all her 
 pride, all the woman in her, grew up to pre 
 vent this other woman from taking from her 
 what was hers. She had hardly spoken to Reg 
 165
 
 1 66 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 all the way home, and had gone up to her 
 room before he said good night, slipping away 
 from formalities in the way that is so easy in 
 a great, many windowed house. 
 
 What had promised to be her triumph had 
 been her humiliation, but she was gaining in 
 pride. The idea that Reg could ask her to 
 marry him when he did not love her, she could 
 not understand. He must love her. A man 
 always, in her world, asked a woman to marry 
 him because he cared more for her than for 
 anything else on earth. The idea of Reg 
 thinking of her money never had the slightest 
 entrance into her mind. Her money had done 
 too little for her, that she could see, for her 
 to realize its value in the eyes of other people. 
 
 Edyth was young and healthy. Before she 
 had become so miserable she had eaten a 
 hearty supper, so she finally went to sleep ; but 
 in the morning she awoke with the first gray- 
 ness of the dawn with that sense of heaviness, 
 of disaster, of unnamed sorrow, which follows 
 a waking when sleep has come to a heavy 
 heart.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 167 
 
 The heavy boughs of the maples were dew 
 laden against her casement, and all the air was 
 full of the busy stir of birds. She could not 
 lie still, and she could not think of getting up 
 to face them all at breakfast. She opened the 
 casement and looked out. The river lay clear 
 and cool in the distance, and along its rather 
 rugged banks, along the bluff above, ran a 
 road fringed by alders, goldenrod, and iron- 
 weed. She could see the river mists hanging 
 ragged on the branches. 
 
 There came around the corner of the house 
 the shrill whistle of Yellow Bob on his way to 
 the stables. Edyth put her head out of the 
 window. 
 
 "Bob!" she cried. 
 
 " Yesstim ! " 
 
 " Saddle Gladys." (Poor Edyth! Even in 
 naming her pretty brown mare she had had 
 no imagination, but had called it by the name 
 she would have given a baby.) " I am going 
 to ride." 
 
 " Fo h sun up?" 
 
 " Now."
 
 1 68 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 "All right m." 
 
 There was a strangeness in the world; it 
 was as though it were new. Edyth had never 
 done such a thing as this before. The mare 
 seemed to feel her mood and adapt herself to 
 it. They went springing over the turf of the 
 field that led through to the river road, and 
 then the horse s feet were brisk on the road s 
 hard whiteness. 
 
 Edyth hardly knew how long she had ridden. 
 She did not come back to the river road, but 
 turned off into another, which ran through a 
 little glen. The sun had grown hot, and she 
 needed food. It looked very cool and inviting 
 down in there, and she rode her horse over the 
 almost spongy turf that led down the hillside 
 into the glen. She dismounted, careful of her 
 dress and her gloves, and, taking off her hat, 
 sat down by the side of a fern shaded little 
 spring. 
 
 There was a stillness all about her and a 
 shadow. The spring was wide again on the 
 other side of the bunch of willows, and there 
 was another hollow. Edyth had not been here
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 169 
 
 since the year before, and she was wondering 
 how it looked on the other side. There used 
 to be some raspberry canes over in there. She 
 wondered if there was any late fruit on them, 
 and half started up to see, but was arrested by 
 a voice a voice whose every tone she had 
 grown to dread and hate Mary Baylor s. 
 
 Then she remembered that she was on the 
 Baylor place. Of course Mary s companion 
 was Reg. Edyth felt that it must be so. She 
 sat still as though she had not the volition to 
 move. She did not want to hear what they 
 were saying, but she had not the courage to 
 get up and let them see her there. And so she 
 sat still. 
 
 " Please go away," Mrs. Baylor s voice was 
 saying plaintively. There were almost tears 
 in it. " Please, oh please, go away ! I can do 
 nothing more for you, and if Mr. Baylor were 
 to know about you " 
 
 " I don t know what he could say to me, 
 that hasn t been said already," said a bitter 
 voice that was a man s, but yet not Reg s. " I 
 have had the whole catalogue of vituperation
 
 170 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 flung at me from one quarter or another, 
 
 and " there was a throaty laugh which 
 
 sounded as though the vocal chords had been 
 through very rough usage " I think I can 
 claim the credit of having deserved it all. But 
 you, Polly, you never were like that." 
 
 " Can t you understand," Edyth hears her 
 say, "that everything is different now? I am 
 married. I have a little girl. I do not want 
 my husband my child " 
 
 " To know, eh? Well, it isn t exactly kind. 
 But I am a very sick man. You are the only 
 friend I have in the world. I wanted to come 
 down here and see it all before I died." 
 
 " Don t ! Oh, dortt ! " 
 
 A touch of red came into Edyth s cheeks. 
 " Oh, mine enemy ! " her heart seemed to 
 say, " so you have a secret to hide ! " 
 
 Edyth was frightened at the intensity of her 
 own feeling. She had never expected to be 
 a listener. Yesterday she would have scorned 
 doing anything so dishonorable, but today 
 she opened wide her ears. 
 
 "Does it bother you so much, Polly?"
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. I? 1 
 
 There was almost gentleness in the voice. 
 " Well, I will go away again. I am glad to 
 have seen you, though. I rather thought I 
 might see you now and then and I should 
 like to see your baby. I am " he laughed 
 again "absolutely disreputable, I know, but 
 nobody could hurt you or yours, Polly." 
 
 " Poncet is coming down. I have a letter 
 from him. He would know you. It would be 
 a secret between us. You must oh, won t 
 you ? go away." 
 
 " Yes, if I can." 
 
 " Please, oh please, promise me ! " 
 
 Gladys made a noise with her foot. Edyth 
 could fairly hear the silence that followed ; 
 and then there was the sound of people moving 
 away.
 
 XIV. 
 
 T^DYTH hardly knew how long she sat 
 "^ there; long enough to have created 
 dozens of conversations in which she could 
 tell Reg all that she had overheard. She did 
 not think of going home and telling it to her 
 aunt. The girl had gone beyond that stage, 
 and had come to the realization of her own in 
 dependent womanhood. 
 
 As she rode up through the shadow of the 
 glen, she passed a man who she felt sure must 
 be the one that had been speaking to Mrs. 
 Baylor. He looked like a gentleman whose 
 manners and morals had grown seedy with his 
 clothes. There was a half attempt at respect 
 ability, whose gloss was taken off by a glance 
 at the dissipated face, worn with enough life 
 to have killed half a dozen men. There was 
 a something about the figure that looked 
 
 foreign or theatrical. Theatrical, Edyth called 
 172
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 173 
 
 it, because the foreign flavor was outside her 
 knowledge or comprehension. She looked at 
 him with fear and disgust, and yet with a sort 
 of pleasure, too. Truly she need never fear 
 Mrs. Baylor again, after she had told her story 
 to Reg. 
 
 It was afternoon when she arrived at home 
 and found General and Mrs. Courtney out on 
 the veranda looking for her, and Reginald on 
 horseback about to go in search of her. 
 
 " There she is now," her aunt said, with a 
 worried look. " Where have you been ? " 
 
 " For a little ride. I went farther than I 
 intended, and came home by the glen road." 
 
 Mrs. Courtney suddenly turned to her hus 
 band, as though he were responsible. "Wasn t 
 it on the glen road that Bob saw that queer 
 looking man yesterday ? My dear Edyth, you 
 must not go out unless Reginald is with you. 
 He has been so anxious that he was about to 
 start after you." 
 
 " Yes, I was going to start after you," Reg 
 said, turning himself in his saddle and dis 
 mounting to lift Edyth to the ground, " but I
 
 174 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 did you and the mare the compliment of 
 thinking you could take care of yourselves. 
 But if you had told me, and waited for a 
 breakfast, I should have been delighted to go 
 with you." 
 
 In the new knowledge of Mrs. Baylor which 
 Edyth possessed, and in her knowledge of 
 Reg s opinions upon some subjects, she had 
 come to consider him as her own again. The 
 feeling had been strengthened by the sight of 
 him, big and stalwart, a modern knight in 
 corduroy, setting out to rescue his lady love 
 from unknown terrors. It was a little dampen 
 ing to know that he had been ordered out and 
 was going with a laugh. 
 
 " There is a luncheon inside for you, and I 
 am coming in to help you eat it," Reg said. 
 "I was started off with a snatched crust." 
 
 " Come along," Edyth cried gaily. She 
 looked almost pretty, she was so happy and 
 elated innocent, good little Edyth ! over the 
 downfall of this other woman. Reg had 
 probably known what sort of person she was 
 all along, and while it was not very respectful
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 175 
 
 in him to parade about with her before his 
 mother and his sweetheart, still, that ought 
 to be forgiven. 
 
 " I ll be there. Get your hat off." 
 It was a substantial luncheon that the maid 
 put on the table when she knew that Miss 
 Edyth was coming in hungry. Substantial 
 meals were served at the Courtneys every 
 day, as was consistent with all the other 
 family appointments. Edyth sat down to it 
 with a keen relish. She had laid out her line of 
 tactics. She was going to tell Reg the story, 
 as she would tell him a story about any one 
 else. She would ignore the fact of his more 
 than casual acquaintance with Mrs. Baylor. 
 
 Reg was in his best humor. He had kept 
 his horse at the door, and he was going to ride 
 over to the Baylor estate this very afternoon. 
 From former experiences he knew that Mrs. 
 Baylor at her most gracious was Mrs. Baylor 
 at home. There were a few arbors and quaint, 
 rickety old summerhouses about Castle Hill. 
 Mary and Dolly were a pair of merry compan 
 ions with whom to while away the hours.
 
 176 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 Sometimes Baylor came out under the trees 
 and smoked a cigar. It was seldom enough 
 that Reg could be induced to smoke a cigar in 
 the society of his divinity. To Dick Baylor, 
 Reg is the veriest boy, a callow stripling. He 
 looks at him sometimes, and wonders in an 
 idle fashion what Polly finds in his society to 
 amuse her, and presently comes to the conclu 
 sion that she sets him at errands. " And a 
 good thing, too," he thinks. " I m past errand 
 running myself." 
 
 Such an insight into enjoyment of simple 
 living as Reg gets from this household is a 
 revelation to him. He has never known people 
 to whom the light of day, the sun overhead, 
 the simple every day pleasures, were of para 
 mount importance. People in Ellenbro the 
 people he had known all of his life were 
 always living for the vision of their neighbors. 
 Every act was not first of all for the pleasure 
 of it, but that it might make some sort of an 
 impression upon the neighborhood. When 
 Mary was at home she enjoyed up to the edge 
 every minute of the glad day. She was a gay,
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 177 
 
 jolly, merry hearted girl, whose heart held not 
 one grain of malice toward any soul on earth. 
 Sometimes her sense of humor made her see 
 the fun in people. 
 
 " There are people," she said one day to 
 Reg, " who are so funny that I cannot see why 
 they are not perpetually entertained by their 
 own society." 
 
 But whatever she said there was never in any 
 thing the least sting of ill nature. 
 
 There floated in his mind s eye a vision of 
 her, in her simple white gown and gay hat, 
 idling away the time about the hillside of her 
 lawn, amusing Dolly, waiting for him to come. 
 He knew that she would lift Dolly up, and be 
 unaffectedly glad to see him, and that she 
 would tell him so. There were smiles at the 
 corners of his mouth as he thought of it. It 
 was a little early to go. He looked at the tall, 
 solemn old clock in the dining room, and 
 thought that he could very profitably kill half 
 an hour talking to Edyth, and eating the re 
 mainder of his luncheon. 
 
 Edyth had come down stairs after Reg had
 
 178 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 begun to knock his heels on the floor and 
 frown a little impatiently. Poor Edyth had 
 not the knowledge of dress any more than she 
 had the knowledge of any gift of the imagina 
 tion. She had a fondness for wrappers. If 
 there is one thing more than another that re 
 quires to be idealized it is a wrapper. There 
 must be an idealization both of wearer and 
 gown. With Edyth there was neither. A 
 wrapper, to her, was a plain, unpoetic wrapper, 
 made neatly, and strictly for business, of plain, 
 dotted cambric, well washed and starched. It 
 was clean and ugly, and the wearer was sun 
 burned and plain. She had dabbed cologne 
 water, a scent which Reg hated, upon her hair, 
 and pushed it back from her heated brow. 
 She looked as practical as bread and butter 
 and roast beef. She came in oddly upon Reg s 
 vision of that other woman s frills and coquet 
 tish bows, so innocently donned. 
 
 " Where did you go this morning?" he asks, 
 as he carefully puts the ingredients of a salad 
 dressing into a wooden spoon and stirs them 
 around. " Did you stop anywhere ? "
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 179 
 
 " I got off for a little while by the spring in 
 the glen." 
 
 " I wouldn t go that road alone, Edyth." 
 
 " It seems to be safe enough for some people. 
 I saw one of your friends there this morning." 
 This was exactly what she had intended not to 
 say. She was to ignore that Mrs. Baylor was 
 a friend. 
 
 "Who was that?" 
 
 There was nothing for it but to go on. 
 " Mrs. Baylor." 
 
 " Was she riding ? " Reg had no idea how 
 much eagerness went into his voice. He had 
 asked Mrs. Baylor if she rode over and over 
 again, but she had always laughed and said 
 she was afraid she would fall off. 
 
 " No," Edyth said icily. " She seemed to 
 have walked. I only heard her. She was on 
 one side of the spring, behind the trees, when 
 I was on the other. She had evidently made 
 an appointment there with a man a man who 
 looked like a dissipated tramp. She was beg 
 ging him to go away and keep out of her hus 
 band s way ; not to annoy her in her new life.
 
 i8o THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 I presume it was some one of her early asso 
 ciates who knows more about her early life 
 than she cares to have known." 
 
 Edyth was not a virago, but her voice had 
 gone on and on, gaining in intensity as her 
 anger against this woman arose. She had not 
 looked at Reg s face. It was perfectly white. 
 
 " And you" he could hardly speak. " And 
 you stood and listened, and came away to 
 garble fragments of a private conversation not 
 intended for your ears! I have heard that 
 there was no honor in women some women 
 who call themselves good. Let me tell you 
 that I do not believe that there is one second 
 in Mrs. Baylor s life that she would hide from 
 the world. I know that she would never take 
 advantage of another woman behind her back ! " 
 And the foolish, hot headed, hot hearted young 
 gallant walks out of the room, and comes very 
 near slamming the door.
 
 XV. 
 
 TF one of the chairs had suddenly shot out 
 an arm and struck him, Reg would not 
 have been more astonished than he was by 
 this new development of character in Edyth. 
 There had been weakness and shyness and 
 some obstinacy the obstinacy of ignorance, 
 embroidered with not much symmetry upon 
 the native goodness of her character ; but this 
 " downright meanness," as Reg called it 
 angrily to himself, was something unpar 
 donable. 
 
 He flung himself upon his horse, and 
 naturally went straight toward Mrs. Baylor s, 
 because he had learned from experience that he 
 was always soothed by the sound of Mary s 
 voice and the touch of little Dolly s baby arms. 
 He found Mary walking feverishly about, a new 
 color in her cheeks and an impatient tremble 
 in her hands. 
 
 181
 
 1 82 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " I am so glad to see you," she said. Her 
 heart was going in her bosom like a spinning 
 ball, and she welcomed anything that took her 
 out of herself. Perhaps an older man would 
 have seen that there was something troubling 
 her, that she was looking for a diversion any 
 diversion, and took the first one that came to 
 hand. He would have felt the fever in the 
 hot little hand as it touched his own ; he would 
 have seen the evidences of a disturbed mind, 
 in the careful toilet that must have taken much 
 longer than usual to make. 
 
 " I am very glad to be here," Reg said rather 
 tamely. He was so honest, he had so few fine 
 phrases in his vocabulary; he was so un 
 accustomed to needing them. " Where is 
 Dolly?" He looked about for the merry little 
 figure, that was always ready to climb upon 
 his knee, and hunt for treasures in his pockets. 
 
 " Dolly?" with indifference. " She is happy 
 in a new discovery. There is a brook that 
 runs through the place. Willow Pond, they 
 call it, although why pond, Pin sure I don t 
 know."
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 183 
 
 " Oh, yes ! I cut all my whistles there as a 
 youngster. It s a famous place for catfish. 
 Did you ever catch a catfish ? " 
 
 " No, I never did, but I d like to." 
 
 Well " 
 
 "Let s!" 
 
 "Get your hat." Reg had been ordering 
 Edyth about ever since she was a very young 
 child, and still owned that privilege, which 
 was perhaps the reason he valued it so little. 
 It may also have been the reason he felt such 
 a sense of manly power in sending Mrs. Baylor 
 after her hat. She came back in a moment 
 with it on, looking ten times as pretty as she 
 had without it. 
 
 "Who is with Dolly?" he asked, more for 
 something to say than anything else, because 
 he expected it to be her father, and Mary knew 
 what picture of the father and child was in his 
 mind. Her own face clouded over. 
 
 "A colored girl," she said shortly. They 
 walked along in silence for a few minutes. 
 
 " Mr. Baylor went out this afternoon to make 
 some calls," Mary said then.
 
 1 84 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " Did he ? " Embarrassment was in Reg s 
 voice. He was wondering where in the mis 
 chief Richard Baylor could be calling, and he 
 was acutely conscious that Mary must know 
 what he was thinking of. 
 
 " What a cad the man must be," he thought 
 to himself, "to go to call upon people who have 
 not been to see his wife." 
 
 " An old friend, whom he met at the garden 
 party," Mary went on. 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 They were walking along through the 
 meadow. The sun was on the timothy and 
 clover, bringing out all its sweetness. The 
 second crop had not been cut, but was waiting 
 to be " turned under " to enrich the soil. It 
 was ragged and clumpy, but sweet, and the 
 bees were blundering and honey gathering in 
 the dull red blossoms. 
 
 " Do you like the country ? " Reg remarked. 
 
 " I used to think I loved it," she said 
 after a moment, " but perhaps it was only my 
 idea of it. I used to look at the stage country, 
 and think it was simply heaven. I think
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 185 
 
 there are a great many things that we see the 
 semblance of, and think we should be perfectly 
 happy if we only had them in reality, which 
 would disappoint us dreadfully if they really 
 came our way." 
 
 Reg said nothing, but he looked down at 
 her, and a sigh came in his throat. He only 
 switched at the timothy tops and was silent. 
 They were nearing the fringe of willows 
 which defined the " pond," a narrow stream 
 with deep holes here and there where it 
 turned; holes where disobedient little boys 
 loved to gather in the stolen delight of u goin 
 in swimmin ." They could hear Dolly s shrill 
 little screams of delight, and in an instant see 
 her dancing about upon her little bare pink 
 toes, her flower of a white sunbonnet pushed 
 back from her face. She was leaning over a 
 tin pail. 
 
 "Can you catch any more?" she was in 
 quiring excitedly. " I m goin to take this one 
 home and pet it, and maybe it can be cooked for 
 Dick s supper." When Dolly loved her father 
 more dearly than usual she called him Dick.
 
 1 86 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " Not much of a supper s mess o fish kin 
 you ketch this here way," the negro girl said. 
 She had a stout barrel hoop in her hand, to 
 which had been fastened a sort of bag made of 
 several thicknesses of mosquito netting. She 
 was using it as a seine, dipping up now and 
 then a minnow or a sunfish, or a little catfish. 
 
 Dolly ran to her mother when she saw her, 
 wild with delight. " It makes me feel about 
 five years old," Mary said. " I d like to go 
 wading in Willow Pond and catch fish 
 myself." 
 
 "Why don t you?" 
 
 She laughed a little oddly and looked at 
 him. " I don t know that it would be any 
 different from wading about as we used to do 
 at Trouville, in France. It seems a little 
 different, though, to be doing well, anything 
 odd here in America." 
 
 " They say there are no people so odd and 
 unconventional as Americans." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! Americans in Europe. They 
 are odd enough. But there isn t any place 
 where an odd thing is as odd as it is in
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 187 
 
 America." She looked longingly at the seine 
 and at the cool brook, at her shoes that only 
 needed a pull at a ribbon to come off, and then 
 back at Reg. Honestly in her heart she saw 
 no possible reason why she shouldn t take off 
 her shoes and stockings and wade in the water. 
 Brook water and sea water, Atlantic City and 
 Ellenbro , are much the same. But there 
 was something in the boy s face that stopped 
 her. 
 
 " Oh, no, it hardly does to forget one s years. 
 Dolly will have no respect for her mother s 
 age and wisdom if she sees me paddling about 
 catching fish." 
 
 She sat down on the bank, looking away in 
 another direction, and took her big hat off. 
 Her dress was cut low around her pretty white 
 neck, and she had gathered her soft dark hair up 
 in a knot and run a white ribbon through it. 
 There was a wistful expression in Mary s face, 
 as it settled into quietness after the merriment 
 that had swept over her at the thought of a 
 possible "lark." 
 
 Reg was young ; and there was a touch of
 
 1 88 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 something upon his pulse which weighed 
 heavier every hour. He was close to Mary, 
 closer than he had been since the night of the 
 theatricals, when he carried her in. The 
 thought of her taking off her shoes and stock 
 ings to wade in the brook had struck his 
 imagination as the fact of her really doing it 
 would never have done. He thought of all 
 sorts of things that he would like to say to her. 
 He was astonished at his own audacity in 
 thinking them ; and yet he lingered delightedly 
 over them. It is almost impossible to put two 
 young people down together wise old Poncet 
 had thought it all out as he had seen them to 
 gether and not have the subject which was 
 made for boys and girls come up between them. 
 
 It seemed to Reg that there was inspiration 
 in the air. 
 
 " How pretty it is out here," Mary said, 
 pulling at the grass beside her. " But then 
 almost any place is pretty sometimes ; " and she 
 sighed. 
 
 " Any place is pretty, it seems to me, if you 
 have the people you care for with you."
 
 THE FIRvST FAMILIES. 189 
 
 Do you ever think that?" she asked him 
 wonderingly. 
 
 He reddened under her gaze. " Why 
 shouldn t I think that? Haven t I an under 
 standing?" 
 
 "Yes, but you never have struck me as 
 having been in love, even the little bit that 
 men call being in love." 
 
 " What do you mean by being in love?" he 
 asked her. 
 
 She opened her mouth two or three times, 
 just parting her lips to speak. It was very 
 sunny and quiet down there by the brook. 
 They were sitting on the bank with their feet 
 hanging over to the pebbles. Dolly was 
 hilariously seining for minnows further up, 
 the sun and shade dappling her white gown 
 and plump little pink legs as they moved 
 through the water. Mary pulled a blade of 
 grass and drew it through her fingers as though 
 it were new and strange. 
 
 " I don t believe in men s love at all. They 
 are never constant except in books. People 
 write books full of stuff men who die for
 
 190 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 people they love, but I notice " there was a 
 cynical gleam in Mrs. Baylor s eye " that 
 their taking off is usually complicated with 
 other diseases. Look down deep enough and 
 there is usually some other motive cropping 
 out. Sometimes, I know, they hardly know it 
 
 themselves. They think " and then Mary 
 
 stopped. She did not truly believe that there 
 was any underlying " motive " in Dick s love 
 for her in those old days. There never had 
 been any doubt of it until the last day or two, 
 when she saw him with his own people, who 
 utterly refused to be her people. 
 
 "What do they think ?" Reg s voice was 
 not exactly within his own control. 
 
 " They think a woman will stand any 
 thing." 
 
 Reg hated Baylor because he was who he 
 was. This new joy that had come into his heart 
 was so innocent that it had not made him 
 ignoble, had not caused that disintegration 
 that seems to begin at every point in a charac 
 ter under the dissolving influence of an unlaw 
 ful passion. He was not far enough gone to
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 191 
 
 be glad that Baylor was making her unhappy, 
 seeing in this an opportunity for himself. 
 
 "It is a coward who would make a woman 
 like you stand anything," he said with sudden 
 vehemence. 
 
 She turned her face to his with every bit of 
 color out of it. u What right have you to 
 say that to me ? " There is cool scorn utter 
 repudiation of everything, it seems to him in 
 her voice, and it heats instead of cools his blood. 
 " What are you to me ? " 
 
 " Nothing at all to you, I suppose," poor 
 Reg says hotly, " but you know perfectly well 
 that you are everything to me. You know 
 that, from the very first instant I saw you, I 
 have had no choice but to follow where you 
 led. You know I wouldn t have it otherwise." 
 
 Oh, good and conventional woman, there is 
 but one thing for you to do in a case like this. 
 All the highly moral books have told you long, 
 long ago what is expected of you, just as all 
 the bad books have told you, with nicety of 
 detail, what is done by those others in whom 
 the prayerbook says there is " no health." But
 
 1 92 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 Mary Baylor has been brought up in the 
 natural school. She does not lift her skirts, 
 arise, and move away, sorrow and scorn in her 
 eyes, nor does she narrow her eyes and calcu 
 late, and think that her hour of revenge has 
 come. She associates both of these attitudes 
 with the stage, and she is playing neither the 
 part of the ingenue nor that of the adventuress. 
 
 She turns around, and the color comes back 
 into her face. A little curl starts up at each 
 corner of her mouth, as she opens it to say, 
 " Well, of all the young fools ! " 
 
 " I know I m a fool," Reg says, " and I sup 
 pose you couldn t help making one of me. I 
 suppose I made myself. You couldn t help 
 being yourself, I suppose." 
 
 " My dear boy, your suppositions are mainly 
 correct. I m perfectly sure that I cannot help 
 being myself, and I do not want to help it. 
 But I deny having made a fool of you." She 
 really looks at him in wonder. If Dolly had 
 slapped her she would hardly have been more 
 surprised. " Don t be silly. Why, I like you. 
 You are just like my young brother, or like
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 193 
 
 what he ought to be. I can I thought I 
 could talk to you about anything. Why, 
 you are a boy." 
 
 " I don t believe you have a heart," Reg 
 dolefully replies. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I have," Mary says, rising; "and 
 there is no room for another there. It has 
 more to bear than a boy like you ever ought 
 to know of. Go back to your sweetheart, that 
 nice girl." Mary is polite, but she is honest, 
 and she has never seen anything in Edyth to 
 bring out any complimentary adjective spon 
 taneously. " You will learn after a while, my 
 dear boy, that you are much happier with 
 some one who cares a great deal for you than 
 with some one who doesn t care at all." 
 
 "But whom " 
 
 " I wouldn t say it." She turns quickly and 
 calls Dolly. "I ll take the baby home. I 
 think you had better stay away for a while." 
 
 Poor Reg turns and goes sadly up the fields, 
 back to Edyth, to duty. As he comes out by 
 the water gap he sees, loafing there, a figure 
 which makes his fists ache. It is the dis-
 
 194 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 reputable looking man whom Edyth lias seen. 
 He looks at Reg, and then quickly turns in 
 the other direction, and starts walking, his 
 hands in his pockets, in the direction from 
 which Reg has just come. 
 
 Reg stops and half turns around, and then 
 sets his face. He will not turn and look.
 
 XVI. 
 
 IT) KG might have gone home happier had he 
 turned in time to see that Mary and little 
 Dolly went across the fields alone, with the 
 maid coming along behind, and the pail spill 
 ing water and minnows at every step. It was 
 almost dinner time, and all the way home 
 Mary built up sentences of a cutting nature 
 to say to her husband. She felt sure he would 
 be there to meet her. She knew that she 
 would say nothing of the sort when she 
 actually met him, but it cooled her brain to 
 think she would. 
 
 She had never quarreled with Dick. Some 
 times, when his indifferent air grew too in 
 different, she had felt the storm rising; but 
 the sight of his calmness, of the light catch 
 ing his blond head or the line of his perpen 
 dicular profile, had always sent her back to 
 him happy again in the very fact of his being 
 195
 
 196 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 there. Almost invariably silent, with no 
 words to waste upon any one, Mary yet hung 
 upon the very expressions of his face. She 
 told herself that he only loved her because she 
 loved him ; she tormented herself with a thou 
 sand doubts, and then she thanked Heaven 
 that he was so indifferent. He was hers. 
 
 This evening, as she drew near, she lost all 
 memory of Reg and his poor little story in her 
 delight at seeing Baylor again. It was a de 
 light which time had no power to conquer. 
 Mary s love was part of herself, the very spring 
 of her nature, the incentive for almost every 
 act of her life, remotely or nearly. But the 
 slender, slow moving figure, with its eternal 
 cigar, and hands idly thrust into pockets, was 
 not pacing up and down before the door, nor 
 reclining in the wicker chair under the trees. 
 Seated stiffly on one of the hard settees which 
 had disfigured the veranda for a generation, 
 sat his elder half sister, Miss Baylor, looking 
 hard and stiff and unflinching, as a woman 
 usually looks when she has come to perform a 
 duty. It was not easy for Miss Baylor to come
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 1 97 
 
 here, and she ought to be honored for doing 
 her duty as she saw it. 
 
 Careless Mary had never once thought of re 
 turning the visit that had been made to her. 
 Richard had not suggested it, and she was not 
 sufficiently accustomed to formal visits to think 
 of it for herself. She came up now with her 
 usual sweetness and grace and put out her 
 hand. Her heart was sick with disappoint 
 ment that her husband was not here, and her 
 ears were alert for his step in the house. 
 
 "Come up, Dolly my little daughter and 
 speak to your aunt ; " but Miss Dolly held 
 back. There was nothing in that face to 
 please her. 
 
 Miss Baylor paid no sort of attention to her. 
 " Where is Richard ? " she asked dryly. 
 
 " He " a set look came into Mary s face 
 " he went to call upon a friend." 
 
 "What friend?" 
 
 " An old friend whom he met the other day 
 a Mrs. Rogers, I believe," Mary said quietly. 
 
 A heavier gloom settled itself upon Miss 
 Baylor s countenance.
 
 198 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " Nannie Vance ! We all thought, at one 
 time, that Richard and Nannie would make a 
 match of it." 
 
 A quick flush went over Mrs. Baylor s face. 
 " I suppose it would have been a great deal 
 better if they had," she blurted out. 
 
 "Perhaps it would," said Miss Baylor un 
 flinchingly. " The Baylors have been here a 
 long time. Our great great grandfather was 
 one of the earliest English settlers in Virginia, 
 and there has never been anything but honor 
 and respect for the family ever since " 
 
 "Until now, I suppose." A temper is not 
 a pretty thing in most people, but there is a 
 damask rose tint on Mary s cheek that is 
 lovely. Miss Baylor is not so severe that she 
 cannot see it, and feel like muttering " A doll s 
 face!" 
 
 " I do not consider it wise for a man ever to 
 marry outside his own class, because people in 
 different positions in life can hardly understand 
 each other s customs." She cleared her rather 
 raspy throat. "We can only do our best to 
 keep up the honor of the family by offer-
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 199 
 
 ing advice, in whatever spirit it may be re 
 ceived." 
 
 " May I ask what I have done that is so 
 different from the customs of your family?" 
 There is anything but meekness in the tone of 
 the inquiry. 
 
 " In the first place and I do not see that it 
 is necessary to go behind and beyond that 
 since you first attracted his attention and made 
 his acquaintance, you have exercised all your 
 power to keep Reginald Courtney at your side, 
 and alienate him from the sweet young girl to 
 whom he was engaged to be married. What 
 ever your motives may be I cannot say." Miss 
 Baylor draws in her breath with the evident 
 intention of going on, and then she sees a look 
 in her young sister in law s face which is 
 rather daunting. 
 
 " May I ask how I am supposed to know 
 that Mr. Reginald Courtney is engaged to be 
 married to any one, and what possible concern 
 of mine it can be if he is engaged to fifty peo 
 ple ? Or what possible concern of yours ? I 
 have been in the habit of choosing my friends
 
 200 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 as they suited me personally, and I shall con 
 tinue to do so indefinitely. I am at a loss to 
 know whether you are sent by the young 
 man s mother or his sweetheart, to plead for 
 him, but you may take back my word that I 
 am entirely unacquainted with either, by their 
 own desire, and can hardly be considered re 
 sponsible for my acts to people who do 
 not even exist for me." 
 
 There was a slow red flush in Miss Baylor s 
 face. " I come entirely upon my own account 
 for the sake of the family name," she said. 
 There was spite and venom in the voice. The 
 speaker s conscience would give her some 
 severe whips did it realize that she, a good 
 woman, whose daily work was mission schools 
 and benevolent visiting, was exulting in deal 
 ing a malicious blow. There is a great art 
 in so educating our faculties that they may be 
 upon our own side in an argument. 
 
 " When your brother gave me that name he 
 made me its custodian, and himself my adviser," 
 Mary said, her small head aloft ; and bowing 
 to her sister in law, she went into the house
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 2OI 
 
 and left her sitting there upon the stiff 
 wooden settee, to go home when it suited her 
 convenience. 
 
 Mary was miserable. She was ashamed and 
 mortified at her passage at arms with her sister 
 in law, and it seemed to her that she was sur 
 rounded and beset with trouble. She wanted 
 to put her hands over her ears and run. She 
 wondered what Dick would say ; or rather, not 
 what he would say, but what he would think 
 and look when she told him, for of course she 
 would tell him all about it just as soon as he 
 entered the house. 
 
 She went slowly up the stairs, half listening 
 and looking back at every step for some sound 
 of her husband. She walked into the big, airy 
 bed room where she slept, and stepped into 
 the midst of a confusion of garments on chairs 
 and floor and bed. They were all belongings 
 of her husband. 
 
 A light came into her face and heart. He 
 must be at home. She went rapidly through 
 the rooms. He was not there ; and then a 
 scrap of paper stuck in the frame of her mirror
 
 202 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 caught her eye. It was a hastily scribbled 
 note from Dick : 
 
 DEAR POLLY : 
 
 I met some friends of mine starting for the mountains 
 for a four days drive and trout fishing. I have decided 
 to go along. Kiss the baby for me. 
 
 Always yours, 
 
 R.
 
 XVII. 
 
 TVTEXT door to Mrs. Ellery lived her bach- 
 elor brother in law, Dr. Charles Ellery, 
 who might be called the doorkeeper of Ellen- 
 bro life. He ushered in and out everybody 
 of any consequence anybody whose name, 
 coming or going, was worthy of being an 
 nounced. When Mrs. Ellery s husband died, 
 long ago, everybody looked at everybody else, 
 and, seeing futurity in the answering eye 
 beam, looked the other way, and virtuously 
 condemned the people who had no more re 
 spect for a sorrow than to prophesy its speedy 
 consoling. But years had come and gone. 
 Mrs. Ellery s crape had grown rusty, and had 
 not been renewed. Dr. Charles and she were 
 the best of friends, but there had never been a 
 hinting of anything more. It may have been 
 that Dr. Ellery had glanced enviously over 
 
 the syringa hedge which divided the grounds 
 203
 
 204 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 and sighed as he saw the comfort in the 
 widow s domain, but if it were so his sighs 
 had been lost on the air and had left no 
 echoes. 
 
 They were the best of friends. When 
 baking day came a napkin covered plate 
 always went through the hedge; and in the 
 autumn, when the bobwhite enticed the sports 
 man, and Dr. Charles went away over the 
 fields in his old brown corduroys, Mrs. Ellery 
 ordered no meat for her breakfast next day, 
 knowing that she would have broiled partridge 
 to give away. 
 
 Mrs. Ellery was particularly congenial to 
 Dr. Charles, inasmuch as she knew how to 
 hold her tongue. There were not many secrets 
 of Dr. Charles keeping in whose holding he 
 asked anybody s assistance ; but he liked to 
 know as who does not? that there was one 
 person to whom he could tell a story without 
 the certainty that names and dates would be 
 hunted out and the whole tale placarded on 
 the public mind. Then, too, there were counsel 
 and sympathy and womanly advice on the
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 205 
 
 other side of the syringa hedge ; all of which 
 Dr. Charles appreciated. 
 
 It was Dr. Charles custom on summer nights 
 to walk through the gate let into the hedge, 
 and to find his way over to the seats on the 
 grass, where Mrs. Ellery was ensconced for 
 evening coolness, fanning away gnats and 
 mosquitos with a big palm leaf fan. There he 
 would sit down with a sigh of content and 
 smoke his evening cigar. Dr. Charles was 
 slender and grizzled and bright eyed and given 
 to silences. 
 
 Tonight he has asked after the fall crops on 
 Mrs. Ellery s farm, and has heard her ideas 
 upon the silver question, as laid down by, the 
 Baltimore Sun, and they have let the hours run 
 by, and darkness come on without a thought. 
 
 " Have you been up to see Baylor s wife 
 again ? " the doctor asks. He is not particu 
 larly interested in Baylor s wife, but he has 
 gleaned enough of the current talk to know 
 that she is a popular topic of conversation. 
 He makes some concessions to Mrs. Ellery s 
 femininity.
 
 206 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 His sister in law laughed a little uneasily. 
 " I have not had the opportunity. Mrs. Bay 
 lor has not returned my visit." 
 
 "Did you want her to?" the doctor asks, 
 the new light he is touching to his cigar 
 lighting up some wrinkles at the corners of 
 his eyes. 
 
 " Yes, I did," Mrs. Ellery says seriously. 
 " I believe none of the idle tales they tell of 
 her. She is young and thoughtless and pretty, 
 and knows little of our ways. Sometimes, per 
 haps, our ways are a little countrified. But 
 there is a good, true light in those eyes. She 
 makes me think of a merry young girl. I can 
 forget that she has a husband and a child. 
 Possibly she forgets it too, sometimes, poor 
 young thing." 
 
 " It isn t a good thing for a woman to for 
 get. Any losses of memory of that sort are apt 
 to be made up with something of a jog." 
 
 " Yes, I know, but I took a fancy to Dick s 
 wife, and I wish she would let me be a friend 
 to her." 
 
 "Is she unfriendly?"
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 207 
 
 " I have only met her once. Eliza was here 
 this afternoon on her way there. I am afraid 
 she was going to say something harsh to the 
 poor young thing." 
 
 " She looks as though she could take care of 
 herself," the doctor says. 
 
 " You cannot always tell. She has spirit. 
 I like to see a woman with some spirit. Upon 
 my word, Charles, I do believe that if she was 
 one of our own girls, and did exactly as she 
 does, there would be nothing said about her. 
 The poor young thing isn t to be blamed for 
 her up bringing. She couldn t help that." 
 
 The doctor rather likes to argue for the sake 
 of bringing out Mrs. Ellery s palliating 
 answers. " I don t believe one of our own 
 girls would marry and then keep a young man 
 dangling about all the time as she does. She 
 had Reginald Courtney out in the meadow all 
 the afternoon." 
 
 " Well, now those may be her ways." 
 
 " How about his ways?" 
 
 " Who can blame a young man?" 
 
 Dr. Ellery laughs. "According to you,
 
 208 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 there isn t anybody to be blamed, ever;" and 
 he rises to go home. 
 
 There is a sound on his gravel walk ; and 
 then a sharp ring at his door bell, just across 
 the hedge. 
 
 "Who is there?" he calls. 
 
 The tall figure comes rapidly toward him. 
 It is Reginald Courtney. He finds his way 
 through the gate, slamming it back, and comes 
 quite near, as though he did not want to be 
 overheard. 
 
 " Hello, Reg," the doctor calls, while Mrs. 
 Ellery anxiously arises. " Anything the matter 
 at your house?" 
 
 " No." There is constraint in his heavy 
 voice. " But there is a friend of Mrs. Baylor 
 who is very ill taken suddenly. I happened 
 to be there. The servants had gone, and Bay 
 lor wasn t there. I offered to come for you." 
 Then, suddenly recollecting something, he 
 turned to Mrs. Ellery and then back to the 
 doctor. " She told me to speak to you 
 alone, and ask you to tell no one," he said 
 bluntly.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 209 
 
 " Is it a man or a woman?" There was the 
 usual quietude in the doctor s voice ; but Reg 
 did not answer him. He went back through 
 the hedge and on into the dark road. 
 
 " Well, good night," the doctor said cheer 
 fully to his sister in law, exactly as though he 
 were going home and to bed. " I believe it is 
 going to rain before morning. Better shut 
 your windows;" and he followed Reg. 
 
 Reg walked on down the road, past the gates 
 which led into the Baylor place, and which he 
 had left such a little while ago. Just beyond 
 there was a little bridge which crossed Willow 
 Pond. There was a deep hole here where the 
 stream had washed out an eddy for itself in the 
 spring rains. 
 
 Reg stood here for an instant, looking over, 
 and then he fumbled in his pocket and drew 
 out a small object. It was too dark to see it, 
 but Reg knew what it was a little red sea 
 bean, which had been lying next his heart. 
 He held it in his hand for an instant, and then 
 he threw it over into the deepest part of the 
 pool, and went on toward home.
 
 210 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 The whole fabric of his life had changed 
 and had taken on a rougher weave. There had 
 come to him a sorrowful sense of the com 
 plexity of living. It had seemed such a simple 
 thing all these years. There was only the 
 daily coining up and going down of the sun, 
 with enough work and play of the peaceful, 
 commonplace order coming in between to keep 
 life cheerful and sweet. And then suddenly 
 everything had been changed. 
 
 Reg was a manly fellow. But he was 
 young, and the experience of the world was 
 not in him. Probably it never would be to 
 any great extent. There are some natures 
 which remain simple and primitive through 
 everything, just as there are others which live 
 upon fine and subtle distinctions, which are 
 not well occupied except by analysis. Reg 
 was one of the former. When Mrs. Baylor 
 had come supplying some want which he had 
 not known to be there, it had been like a new 
 and wonderful gift, an outlook into a country of 
 which he had never dreamed. He had been 
 so overcome by the wonder of it all that it had
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 21 1 
 
 intoxicated him. He had been blind to every 
 thing ; he told himself he had been a fool. 
 
 He felt that the last few hours had put him 
 through a great experience ; that he was a man 
 of the world, dead to the fresh inspirations of 
 youth. Poor Reg ! As well might a sportsman 
 who had wounded a partridge talk of big game. 
 
 His conscience, too, came in and talked to 
 him. " I have been a brute," he said to him 
 self. He thought tenderly of Edyth, of her 
 goodness, of her purity and sweetness, and 
 oh, man of her devotion to himself. There 
 was no room for a pang of jealousy here. He 
 could rest in sweet security that his shrine 
 would be his, and his alone. 
 
 He walked on and on until he turned in at 
 his own gates. There was a cigar burning in 
 the avenue walk, and as he drew nearer he saw 
 his father walking up and down, his tall form 
 bent, his arms behind his back. He stopped 
 as Reg came striding on. 
 
 General Courtney is fond of quiet, as who 
 that lives with Mrs. Courtney is not? Reg 
 has never dreaded an interview with his father
 
 212 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 in his life. As he came up now, perhaps his 
 nerves were in a snpersensitive state, but he 
 involuntarily braced himself for what he knew 
 had been awaiting him. 
 
 The old general put his hand upon his boy s 
 arm tenderly. He could sometimes forget his 
 ancestors in the welfare of his descendant. 
 "Been out for a walk?" he asked pleasantly. 
 
 " I ve been over to Dr. Ellery s," Reg said 
 doggedly. 
 
 "How is Charles?" 
 
 " Well, I reckon." 
 
 " Well, my boy I am glad it was Charles 
 Ellery you were visiting. It isn t often I have 
 any advice to give you, but " 
 
 Reg shook himself. 
 
 " Don t grow impatient. I know boys will 
 be boys, and there never was anything particu 
 larly straitlaced about me. But there is a 
 certain sense of delicacy which you are losing 
 sight of in going about with this Mrs. Baylor. 
 Edyth is a young girl here under our care; 
 you are engaged to be married to her, and 
 you are not treating her with proper respect."
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 213 
 
 There was dead silence for a moment, and 
 then General Courtney s hand rested a trifle 
 more heavily upon his son s arm, and there 
 was a little break in his voice, never a very 
 determined one. " I want to have one son 
 whom I can look upon without a reproach." 
 
 The family sorrow, the family skeleton 
 which had been locked away so long ago that 
 its bones had almost ceased to knock together 
 with the sound which brings a shudder, was 
 more potent to Reg just now than even his 
 father could imagine. His conscience was 
 sore, with the soreness of a conscience which 
 has never been tried; with a soreness which 
 was aggravated by a smarting pride. He had 
 told himself that he was a fool, and here was 
 his father fearing that he might go astray in 
 the paths which had been marked all his life 
 long by an awful warning. 
 
 He took his father s hand tenderly in his 
 own. " You need not be afraid," he said. " I 
 suppose I am a fool, but that is all over. I will 
 go to Edyth and tell her so."
 
 XVIII. 
 
 TT is a curious fact, and one which phil 
 osophers and Christian Scientists might 
 put into their affirmative list of phenomena 
 providing that matter is entirely governed by 
 minds that when a man s inclination impels 
 him, circumstances immediately fall into place 
 and open a path toward his goal. There seems 
 to be no other road to follow. 
 
 Reg had come home after his scene with Mary 
 Baylor and eaten his dinner in a reproachful 
 silence which his father tried to break by dis 
 cussing why Virginia girls married so few titled 
 men in comparison to New York girls. 
 
 " It seems as though they naturally would 
 do so," speculated the general, " being, in so 
 many cases, so nearly allied to noble old Eng 
 lish houses. But it is true that in the North 
 there are fewer chivalrous gentlemen for the 
 
 young ladies to select from." 
 214
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 215 
 
 The little question of the average Virginia 
 girl lacking one of the chief requisites to 
 eligibility for a foreign marriage was entirely 
 overlooked by the general. 
 
 Even this interesting subject brought out no 
 responses and the dessert of home made ice 
 cream was eaten in a silence that corresponded 
 with its own chill. After dinner Reg went 
 out into the stables to smoke, and it was there 
 that his eye lighted upon a bridle which he 
 had borrowed from Baylor several days before, 
 and had promised to return the next day. 
 
 It seemed imperative that that bridle should 
 be returned to its owner ; and then, he wondered 
 if Mary was angry with him. If so if she 
 thought him an impertinent young scoundrel 
 he felt that he ought to go over and deny it 
 that he had not meant to say that he loved 
 her. His cheek burned at the thought of her 
 supposing that he meant to offer any disrespect. 
 And she had laughed at him and sent him home ! 
 He would tell her that it was not necessary to 
 be angry with him, not necessary for him to 
 stay away ; that he was in no danger whatever.
 
 216 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 That bridle must go home ! He slung it over 
 his arm, and went across the fields in the late 
 summer dusk. 
 
 The house was all dark below as he 
 approached it, except for a dim glow from the 
 old lantern of painted glass which hung from 
 the hall ceiling. He went confidently down 
 the drive, expecting to find Baylor and his 
 wife sitting there, his cigar aglow and her 
 white gown showing in the rays from the 
 lamp. But instead he heard rapid almost 
 excited talk. He hesitated and half turned 
 back. It couldn t be that Baylor and his wife 
 were quarreling in their own front door ! 
 
 There was a cry Mary s voice in fright. 
 Reg thought of the man he had seen that 
 afternoon, and with hardly more than half a 
 dozen steps he was upon the veranda and in 
 the hall. Upon the old settee, where Miss 
 Baylor had sat in judgment this afternoon, 
 there half reclined a man. In an instant Reg 
 recognized the shabby figure as the wreck he 
 had seen that day. Mary was holding his 
 head. Down the front of her white gown ran
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 217 
 
 a slender stream of blood. She held a hand 
 kerchief to the man s mouth. She drew her 
 breath when she saw Reg. 
 
 "Oh, come!" she cried, hardly knowing 
 what she said. " Lift him bring him in. He 
 must not die here." 
 
 Almost mechanically Reg followed her 
 directions, lifting the emaciated figure in his 
 strong young arms, and carrying it to the bed 
 Mary had hastily prepared in one of the guest 
 chambers on the ground floor. 
 
 " Bring him here. Oh, lay him down easily," 
 Mary said. " Poor boy ! " There was a sob 
 fear, sorrow, pity all in her voice. 
 
 "Where is Mr. Baylor?" Reg asked. 
 
 " He is away." There was a straining 
 cough, and the man half rose on his elbow. 
 " Go ! Go for the doctor, please, quick ! " 
 
 Reg started, and then she looked up again. 
 " See Dr. Ellery alone. Speak to no one else," 
 she said in an odd tone, looking at him as 
 though she had recognized him in that instant 
 for the first time.
 
 XIX. 
 
 TV/TRS. ELLERY had not finished fastening 
 her windows against the prophesied 
 rain, when there was a slapping of her knocker. 
 She leaned out of an upper window, whose 
 shutter she was pulling in. She recognized 
 one of the Baylor servants. 
 
 " S that you, Mis Ellery?" he asked. "Th 
 doctor said as how I was to fetch you over 
 to our house jus as quick sever you could git 
 tliar. I ll wait down here, until you comes out." 
 
 " I ll be there directly;" and she put in her 
 well ordered and unexcited head. 
 
 In five minutes she was walking down the 
 road. She did not stop to question the man. 
 She knew that she would learn nothing there. 
 If he had had anything to tell it would have 
 been poured out in a stream the instant she 
 met him. He was silent with the dignity of 
 
 ignorance. 
 
 218
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 219 
 
 There was a flutter in Mrs. Ellery s bosom, 
 although there was no apparent evidence of it 
 as she plodded along the dark country road. 
 There had been no real excitements in her 
 calm life for many years; those which had 
 come had been mostly echoes. Ellenbro s 
 scandals had been few, and the perpetrators 
 had usually been considerate enough to take 
 themselves away from the easily shocked vision 
 of their contemporaries, and let the tales of their 
 wrong doing come back unassisted by personal 
 corroboration, to be supported for a while by 
 malicious tongues, and then to be put away 
 in the minds devoted to the storing up of such 
 lumber. 
 
 The wide front door at the Baylors was 
 standing open, with the settee against it, but 
 there was nobody in sight. The negro man 
 had left her at the gate and gone on to his 
 own little house in the rear. He knew his 
 wife must have been in the house by this time, 
 and this was the quickest way to learn the 
 news of the trouble. 
 
 Mrs. Ellery went on in alone, timidly.
 
 220 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 There was a band of dim light which came 
 through a doorway down the hall, and it was 
 here that she stopped. The bed was opposite 
 the door, and shaded from the light, but she 
 could see a face surrounded by black hair lying 
 against the piled up pillows, and hear a short, 
 quick breath coming and going. 
 
 " Perhaps," she said to herself, " it is her 
 brother." And then she remembered that 
 Eliza Baylor had given her the letter to read, 
 which had announced Richard Baylor s mar 
 riage, and he had said explicitly that his wife 
 had no family whatever. But, here she was, 
 sitting on the side of the bed, holding this 
 man s hand, an expression of anguish upon 
 her face. 
 
 The doctor stood by the old fashioned 
 mahogany set of drawers, mixing some medi 
 cine in a glass. His sister in law walked over 
 to him, and stood silent, watching the white 
 powder dissolve under the spoon. 
 
 " I am giving him an opiate," he said com 
 posedly, as though everything had been ex 
 plained. " He has just had a severe hemor-
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 221 
 
 rhagc and must sleep." And then he went 
 on with directions here and there, which Mrs. 
 Ellery began to follow out, trying to pay no 
 attention to that miserable figure which sat 
 there by the bed. 
 
 After he had administered his medicine, 
 lifting the man s head deftly and tenderly, Dr. 
 Ellery took his broad, old fashioned straw hat 
 from the chair where he had laid it, and started 
 out. Mrs. Ellery followed him. 
 
 "Where is Richard Baylor?" she asked. 
 
 " He doesn t seem to be here." 
 
 "Where is he?" 
 
 " I didn t ask. It might be embarrassing." 
 
 " Charles Ellery," his sister in law said, 
 with heat in her placid voice, " I am ashamed 
 of you ; " and she went back without asking him 
 what she felt she must know who the sick 
 man was. She went up to Mary, and put her 
 arms across the young woman s shoulders. 
 
 " Come away now, my dear. He is sleep 
 ing. The medicine is taking effect. I will 
 take care of him. You must lie down." 
 
 Mary let herself be led out into the hall.
 
 222 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 There she sat down in one of the old leather 
 chairs and began to weep, her shoulders con 
 vulsed with sobs, her head on the chair back. 
 
 Mrs. Ellery patted and stroked her hair. 
 " There, there," she said. And then tenderly, 
 " Where is your husband, my dear ? " 
 
 " I don t know." She puts her handker 
 chief to her mouth and chokes back her tears. 
 " I am glad he is not here ; but I wish he 
 would come home. He wrote me a note say 
 ing he had gone to the mountains for three or 
 four days with some people I don t know." 
 
 " We must find out and send for him." 
 
 "No! Oh, no/" 
 
 "Yes," Mrs. Ellery said; and then, still 
 stroking her hair, " Who is the young man in 
 the other room? He is very, very ill." 
 
 " Yes, I know, I know ! It is all my fault. 
 He told me that he was ill, and I did not ask 
 him to come in. I let him die ! " And her 
 sobs began again, but there was no word as to 
 who the stranger might be. 
 
 " He had no money," she went on. " I 
 never thought of his having no money. He
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 223 
 
 has been sleeping out of doors. I did not ask 
 him to come here. How can I ever forgive 
 myself?" 
 
 " You did not know." It was always Mrs. 
 Ellery s way to comfort, whatever her thoughts 
 might be. And her heart was heavy with 
 fear. There was some secret, some unhappy 
 story, which made this young woman fear even 
 the husband she adored. " At any rate," 
 thought Mrs. Ellery, " I am going to stay until 
 Richard Baylor returns. I can do that much." 
 
 Suddenly Mary started up in a panic. " Dr. 
 Ellery will tell no one that he is here?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " He must not. I should have told him." 
 
 Mrs. Ellery went back into the bed room, 
 her usually placid brows knitted. The sick 
 man was stupid under the influence of the 
 drug, as he lay there, his black hair dank, and 
 his lips parted. She looked at him. Dissipa 
 tion, illness, misery, were written in every 
 line. What could this man be to Mary Bay 
 lor? After all, was it not wiser to let this 
 strange woman, with her unknown ideas, go
 
 224 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 her own way? Why should any one come to 
 champion her, when she must have in the 
 background of her life stories they could never 
 know ? And then her youth, her prettiness, 
 all came in to conquer. Mrs. Ellery turned 
 the lamp wick lower, and settled into an easy 
 chair with a sigh.
 
 XX. 
 
 T) EG did not find Edyth that night. His 
 new resolutions were so warm, and he 
 had expressed his determination to his father 
 so forcibly, that he felt as though his effer 
 vescence of virtue would not keep. He 
 must get it over with at once. He even 
 hesitated at Edyth s door as he went by, and 
 almost made up his mind to knock, and call 
 her out, to tell her that he had been a fool. 
 
 But the next morning he was glad that he 
 had not done so. He had been thinking 
 entirely of his own attitude toward himself, 
 not of Edyth. He would have been putting 
 himself into a sort of school of penitence for 
 the rest of his days. What he could do was 
 to go to her and tell her that he loved her 
 more than any other woman in the world, 
 and ask her to marry him at once. Morning 
 
 found him still in the mind to do that. 
 225
 
 226 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 It is a common custom in the South, since 
 the war, for servants to go home to their 
 own families at night. Very often they live 
 in a little house behind the "big house," but 
 oftener, in a town like Ellenbro , they have a 
 quarter of the town to themselves. The 
 houses, small and roughly made, are white 
 washed, and sometimes very clean inside, with 
 treasures, presents which have been given from 
 time to time by "white folks," on mantel and 
 bureau. Zinnias and morning glories bloom 
 in the front yards, and except that the dancing 
 of other days is almost unknown, the social 
 life is much as it used to be in the "quarters" 
 of a big plantation. The people all gather 
 in the evenings and tell each other the news. 
 
 Cynthia, who had never grown to like Mrs. 
 Baylor, lived on the place, but she was a con 
 stant visitor to her friends and relations in the 
 town, and she retailed all the scraps of gossip 
 she could gather in the Baylor household. 
 She was a mulatto woman of more than ordi 
 nary intelligence and maliciousness, the result 
 of the vicious mixture of blood.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 227 
 
 She had been visiting her friends this even 
 ing when Mary s strange visitor had come, but 
 while she had gone too early for that knowledge 
 to be part of her budget she told of the long 
 afternoon which Mary had spent with Reg, and 
 of Mr. Baylor coming in to find his wife out, 
 and then hastily departing. 
 
 " I ve been wonderin all long jus when he 
 was goin to leave her," Cynthia said con 
 temptuously. " Anybody on this earth could 
 see th wasn no quality bout her kind." 
 
 The next morning, as Mrs. Courtney s old 
 black cook was going toward her kitchen, she 
 passed the Baylors gateway. Standing there 
 in the fog of the early morning was Cynthia. 
 
 " Stop a minute, Aunt Sally," she said. " I 
 want you to tell me if it s too early to gather 
 mango melons." 
 
 Aunt Sally stopped and delivered her expert 
 opinion upon this profound subject, and then 
 Cynthia let out the story, which was more than 
 she could keep. 
 
 " We ve got company," she said with an evil 
 smile.
 
 228 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 " What you talkin bout makin mangoes 
 fuh, when they s company?" Aunt Sally 
 grumbled. " Mangoes ain gwine to take no 
 half n half tention. When you make man 
 goes, you make em." 
 
 " I don know how long he s goin to stay. 
 I don know how long Mass Dick s goin to be 
 gone. You better let on to your young Mr. 
 Reg that his nose is out o joint." 
 
 " What you talkin bout, gal ? " 
 
 " Nothin t all ! We ve jes got company. 
 A gentleman s stayin with us jes now. Come 
 late las night. I ain seen him yet. He pears 
 to be feelin porely." 
 
 An hour later, when Mrs. Courtney went 
 into her kitchen to see that breakfast was 
 going forward properly, she was told the story 
 of Richard Baylor s departure, and that his 
 wife was entertaining a gentleman in his 
 absence. As she poured out the coffee at 
 breakfast, she told it again. 
 
 Reg ate his bacon and eggs stolidly, paying 
 no attention. He unconsciously waited, and 
 his heart beats were a little slower, to see if
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 229 
 
 Edyth would make her additions to the tale, 
 but he looked up and saw her gazing into her 
 plate, her cheeks scarlet. Evidently she had 
 not told his mother what she knew, and any 
 further mention of the story was painful to 
 her. Sometimes in this world it happens that 
 people s impulses fit into their proper circum 
 stances, and then, once in a lifetime, it comes 
 about that two people are penitent at exactly 
 the same moment, and are moved to say so. 
 
 After breakfast was over Reg hung about 
 for an instant. Edyth took the flowers from 
 the table and carried them into the sitting 
 room, and he followed her. She had not 
 looked at him at all. This last humiliation 
 to Mrs. Baylor, this crowning proof of what 
 she herself had said yesterday, had not made 
 Edyth exult. She really and truly cared for 
 Reg. She cared more that she should please 
 him, and that she should have him for her 
 own, than for anything else. Now that it 
 looked as though he must see what sort of 
 woman Mrs. Baylor was, there was an end to 
 all resentment. She only felt sorry and dis-
 
 230 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 gusted that any of them had been mixed up 
 with such a creature. 
 
 She trifled with the heavy roses and the 
 sweet mignonette which her own hands had 
 grown. And when Reg came and stood beside 
 her, she trembled a little and nerved herself 
 for her apology ; but he spoke first. 
 
 " I want to beg your pardon, Edyth," he 
 said, and some way the voice was one that the 
 old light hearted Reg had never learned, "for 
 what I said to you yesterday. It was unworthy 
 of me. It woiild be a pity, indeed, if there was 
 anything in the world that you could not say 
 to me the man you are to marry." 
 
 He put his hand out to touch hers. She 
 turned and looked at him. There is in her face 
 such honest love, tenderness, and womanliness, 
 that she is pretty and it is sure, and pure, and 
 all for him ! He puts his arms about her, and 
 for the first time kisses her as a lover. 
 
 " I was wrong, too," she whispers in a minute. 
 " I meant to tell you I was." Hers is the 
 woman s heart the sort which makes it pos 
 sible for men to have wives.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 231 
 
 Neither of them ever knew that much that 
 was sweet in their lives had come through 
 Mary Baylor that there had been springs 
 of feelings opened by the touch of her fingers, 
 which would flow for each other through after 
 years.
 
 XXL 
 
 M^HAT evening all Ellenbro was ringing 
 with the story that Richard Baylor 
 had gone away, and that there was a man 
 who was very ill staying at his house, and 
 that Mrs. Ellery was there also. The last 
 fact was a later addition which was carefully 
 tacked on to the original tale by Dr. Charles 
 Ellery. " An old friend of the Baylors, who 
 had come in unexpectedly, very ill," he said. 
 "Mr. Baylor was away from home for a day 
 or two, and Mrs. Ellery, who was very fond of 
 Mrs. Baylor, had gone up to stay with her." 
 
 Somehow it seemed to change the look of 
 everything that Mrs. Ellery was there, and 
 very fond of Mrs. Baylor. " But for the Lord s 
 sake," said Dr. Charles to his sister in law, 
 " find out who this man is. I am afraid he is 
 going to die on our hands before Dick Baylor 
 
 gets back. I suppose, though " there was a 
 232
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 233 
 
 whimsical streak in Dr. Ellery " that the 
 earth would cover him from Dick Baylor. He 
 would be too indolent to even ask a question. I 
 have found out that he went off with John 
 Vance and some men from Baltimore to Rock- 
 away County, to fish. I sent Elisha after 
 him." 
 
 All this evening Mary has walked the floor, 
 feverishly, miserably. She looks out at the 
 trees about the house the trees that were there 
 before she was born and will be there after she 
 is dead and she hates them. She thinks of 
 the smell of the roses on the Twenty Third 
 Street stands in New York, and she draws in 
 her breath with a longing. If she were only 
 back there in the gay crowd, away from all 
 this trouble ! She had never been nervous and 
 unhappy there. When Dick was gone, she 
 could picture him. He went out into a land 
 which was familiar to her, with people whom 
 she knew. 
 
 Here, it was all so different. She was strange 
 and alone, and she dreaded, for the first time 
 since she had known him, to see Dick come
 
 234 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 back. Her heart was sick and frozen ; she had 
 lost her happy self confidence. 
 
 She moves restlessly and anxiously about 
 her own room. Dolly has gone to sleep long 
 ago, in the little room next to her mother s, 
 which has been fitted up for her. There is 
 hush and stillness and the shadow of death 
 over the house and disgrace, Mary thinks 
 bitterly. What can she ever say to Dick ? 
 and after all it is no fault of hers. She is in 
 no way to blame; but she shakes herself. It 
 seems to her that she is being made to suffer 
 for all sorts of things which are not her fault. 
 She sees life as she has never seen it before, as 
 something unlovely. 
 
 In a heart like Mary s all times of revolu 
 tion are short and sharp. Yesterday it seems 
 so many yesterdays ago she was happy. She 
 despises herself, and everything else. Her 
 husband no longer loves her and this old 
 shadow from away back in her girlhood has 
 come up again to darken her life. She paces 
 the floor, going up and down, up and down the 
 long, bare bed room where so many Baylors
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 235 
 
 have lived their lives, where children have been 
 born and men have died. It all means nothing 
 to Mary. She has not the background which 
 traditions like these bring in an old family. 
 Happy go lucky Mary, who lives for the day 
 alone, whose blood is of quicksilver, going up 
 and down, has none of the pride, the feeling 
 which comes with ancestors and ancestral 
 walls, be they ever so humble. 
 
 Little Dolly stirs in her sleep and wakens, 
 sitting up. In one of Mary s rapid movements 
 by the door she sees her, a little dimpled, 
 sleepy eyed, rosy baby, sitting up in her little 
 bed, looking about at the room which she 
 hardly knew by night. Mary went to her, and 
 kneeling by the little bed drew the curly, 
 tousled little head against her bosom. " Oh, 
 my baby! My baby!" she said. 
 
 From down stairs there comes a hollow 
 cough. Mrs. Ellery has gone home for an 
 hour, and Dr. Ellery is sitting with his patient, 
 looking and wondering at the worn and cynical 
 face. The door opens softly and Mary comes 
 in, her face almost as pale as the white gown
 
 236 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 which trails on the floor after her. She looks 
 years older in this day and night. There are 
 black rings about her sweet eyes, and the short 
 hair, which usually curls so prettily and 
 coqnettishly about her forehead, is pushed 
 back. In her arms she carries little Dolly, 
 who looks about her amused and interested at 
 the novelty of being taken out of bed at this 
 hour and brought down stairs. 
 
 Mary walks straight up to the bed where 
 her visitor lies, and puts the baby down beside 
 him. " Here is the baby, Jack ; you said you 
 wanted to see her." 
 
 He puts out his thin, dark hand and touches 
 the tiny, rosy, dimpled one which comes from 
 the sleeve of Dolly s night gown. 
 
 " She looks like you," he said huskily. 
 
 "She makes me think " The poor thin 
 
 face has been distorted by a smile which is 
 almost like a grimace of pain, but even that 
 glimmer goes, and Dr. Ellery, who is watching 
 the scene from his seat by the window, sees 
 two tears roll down the man s hollow and 
 wasted cheeks.
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 237 
 
 " There never was a better woman lived on 
 this earth than yon are, Polly," the sick man 
 said. " I don t know why all the sweetness 
 and forgivingness should have been given to 
 you, but I don t know any one else who has 
 them." He spoke with labored breath. 
 
 "No! No! "she said. " It is only that I 
 seem like that. I am only impulsive. Other 
 women are good, and kind better than I." 
 
 Mary s tears were on her cheeks. Dolly 
 turned solemnly from one to the other. Dr. 
 Ellery looked out of the window. He saw a 
 man coming rapidly down the drive. There 
 was no indolence in the walk now, none of that 
 slow movement which belongs to a man whose 
 leisure is hereditary and an integral part of his 
 nature. It is certainly Richard Baylor, but it 
 is a Richard Baylor whose every nerve is 
 keyed up to the highest pitch, who walks 
 down the drive with springing, rapid tread. 
 He has only just left the train which is 
 screaming its way across the meadows by the 
 river. 
 
 Dolly is gazing into the strange man s face.
 
 238 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 Too many things have happened to her in her 
 little life, she is too prone like her mother 
 before her to look into any new experience 
 for its possibilities of pleasure instead of pain, 
 to cry at the unknown. She has known many 
 men, of all sorts, and that this visit has been 
 the cause of taking her out of the bed which 
 even at this early age she considers it a waste 
 of time to inhabit, is nothing against him. She 
 finds him strange, but not fearful. 
 
 She does not hear the firm sound of those 
 footsteps on the gravel, coming up the veranda 
 steps ; but her mother does, and with a cry she 
 flies out to meet her husband. Everything is 
 forgotten in that first sound of his nearness, 
 that footstep which has never failed to find its 
 echo in her heart. 
 
 Baylor had been enjoying himself for a whole 
 day. The attraction which Nannie Vance had 
 had for him had been of the kind which could 
 easily be transferred to her brother; and the 
 men from Baltimore had happened to be of 
 exactly his own sort. There had been stories 
 told, and games of poker played, and the seek-
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 239 
 
 ing out of a camp. They had expected to 
 settle themselves for a week, but when Dr. 
 Ellery s man had put in his appearance with 
 the story that he was wanted at home, Baylor 
 had forgotten everything but his wife and 
 child and had started back. 
 
 When Mary came to meet him, when he saw 
 the dim light, his first thought was for Dolly. 
 "The child!" he said. 
 
 In that one expression Baylor told more than 
 he knew; and it was a knowledge that his 
 wife at once deplored and exulted in. " The 
 child " was not the distinct personality to him, 
 not the individual Dolly, but she was her 
 mother s child, the great bond between them. 
 She was theirs and infinitely precious for that 
 reason. 
 
 Mary put her head against his shoulder, and 
 tears of relief, of self pity, ran down her 
 face. " Dolly is all right," she said. " But 
 oh, Dick!" 
 
 " What is it ? Tell me what it is ? " There 
 was infinite tenderness in Baylor s voice. He 
 put his hand up behind her head, and held it
 
 240 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 close to his cheek. " Can t you tell me what 
 the trouble is? " 
 
 " I should have told you long ago, but I 
 thought it was all forgotten, all over, and there 
 was no need of worrying you about it." 
 
 "Yes?" Baylor s brows were knit above 
 the ruffled dark hair, but he held the slender 
 figure of his wife close against his breast. 
 
 " Long ago when I was a little girl, I had 
 a sister Julia " 
 
 There was a clearing up of Baylor s face. It 
 took on again the look of calm. " But she 
 died," he said with soft positiveness. 
 
 Mary lifted her head and looked up at him 
 in wonder. " Did you know about her all the 
 time?" 
 
 " Yes, my dear. Poncet told me when I first 
 met you. I knew it was a painful subject, that 
 she had died, and I did not wonder that you 
 never spoke of her to me." 
 
 " But her husband " 
 
 " Yes, and I know that her husband and she 
 were unhappy that he went out to get money 
 for her in some way anyhow that he cheated
 
 THE; FIRST FAMILIES. 241 
 
 at cards, and that he killed the man who 
 caught his hand. There is no necessity of 
 your telling me .any of the story. I know it 
 all. I knew it before I ever saw your face. 
 Why should you have sent for me to tell me 
 all this now ? Did that tender conscience of 
 yours begin to hurt? Or" he laughed and 
 held her tear stained face away from him and 
 looked at it " did you hunt about for an 
 excuse to bring me home ? " 
 
 " He Jack is here now. He wrote me a 
 letter before we left New York. He wrote me 
 another, and asked me to met him out by the 
 spring and I did. He is ill he has no 
 money he is dying. Oh, Dick, sick and 
 dying, he has been sleeping out of doors. He 
 came again last night, and I took him in." 
 
 " What ! " Baylor had said, as though her 
 story was incredible ; and then back into 
 his old calm way, " You did perfectly right. 
 Exactly as I should have wished you to do. 
 Where is he ? " 
 
 " There." She pointed to the bed room 
 door.
 
 242 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 Baylor put her away from him and walked 
 back to the door, walked in, and closed it. He 
 opened it again for an instant, and put Dolly 
 into her mother s arms, tearing her delighted 
 little hands from his face. " Put her to bed," 
 he said. " You need sleep. I will stay here." 
 Then back into the room he went, and held 
 out his hand to the man lying there gazing at 
 him with the big and brilliant eyes of one who 
 might be gazing into another world. 
 
 " How do you do, Mason?" he said. "You 
 ought to have come home before." 
 
 Dr. Ellery watched them with the eye of a 
 spectator, until he heard Baylor s speech, 
 and then he gave a violent start. It was 
 probably the first time Dr. Ellery s nerves had 
 ever so entirely controlled his movements in 
 years. Starts are not common with a family 
 physician. But in one moment he was him 
 self again. 
 
 " It seems like old times to see you again, 
 Dick," the man on the bed said, holding the 
 cool, white hand in both of his hot ones. 
 
 Dr. Ellery came up and touched Baylor on
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 243 
 
 the shoulder. " Let me speak to you a 
 moment," he said. 
 
 Baylor turned with him and they went out 
 side the door. 
 
 " Would it not be well," Dr. Ellery asked in 
 his dry voice, " for Mr. and Mrs. Courtney to 
 be sent for? Mason cannot live through the 
 night. The change is coming fast." 
 
 " You know him, then ? " 
 
 " I have been the physician here in Ellenbro 
 for over thirty years." 
 
 " Then, Dr. Ellery, pardon me for saying 
 that you have not done your duty in not attend 
 ing to this before. You must have known that 
 Mason Courtney was a dying man ! My wife 
 has no suspicion of his identity, or she would 
 have done so. Death heals all breaches." 
 
 " Not with Mrs. Courtney." 
 
 " Yes, even with Mrs. Courtney. I never 
 knew my ow r n mother, but I have learned to 
 know what the instinct is, in the mother of 
 my child."
 
 XXII. 
 
 1X/TRS. ELLERY had gone home for an 
 hour, to look about her house before 
 coming back for the night. When she opened 
 her gate she heard voices down by the big 
 front door, and saw that it was open, and that 
 two chairs had been brought down to the lawn 
 and were occupied. There was a sound of 
 tinkling spoons against the sides of glasses, and 
 of low toned talk. Mrs. Courtney and Miss 
 Baylor had come in to await their hostess, to 
 get the particulars of the new development in 
 the town topic. 
 
 They had been talking it over between them 
 selves, but it was not so easy to take up in the 
 placid presence of Mrs. Ellery. 
 
 " You see, we have been trying your rasp 
 berry shrub. Molly brought it out." 
 
 " Molly knows her mistress," Mrs. Ellery 
 
 said comfortably, and sat down in a third 
 244
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 245 
 
 chair, as though she had nothing whatever 
 upon her mind. 
 
 "Where have you been all day?" Mrs. 
 Courtney asked pleasantly. 
 
 " I have been helping Charles with some of 
 his business." 
 
 " It is a very sickly season," Miss Baylor 
 remarked, and there was a silence. 
 
 " There isn t any use beating about the 
 bush," Mrs. Courtney said in her dictatorial 
 voice. " You may say that it is no affair of 
 mine, although I must feel differently, but it 
 is surely some concern of Eliza s that her 
 brother s wife is entertaining her friends in his 
 absence. Who is this man who is staying 
 there ? " 
 
 " That I do not know," Mrs. Ellery says 
 positively. " I only know that he is an old friend 
 of Mrs. Baylor s, and that he is at death s door, 
 and that Richard has been sent for." 
 
 " There has been only one stranger in town, 
 and that was a most disreputable looking man, 
 something like an actor in appearance. Oh ! " 
 there is virtuous indignation in Mrs. Court-
 
 246 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 ney s tones " it is perfectly disgusting to have 
 such a creature as that woman polluting the 
 air of a town." 
 
 " She seems to me a very sweet and chari 
 table woman, if she has taken in an old ac 
 quaintance who is dying." 
 
 "It is that man, then ? " 
 
 " I did not say so." 
 
 "Well, here comes Charles; he will tell us." 
 Mrs. Courtney is angry. Her hatred of Mary 
 Baylor leads her beyond all bounds. " Charles, 
 who is this man in Richard Baylor s house ? 
 We have tolerated enough from this woman, 
 and it is our duty, as upholders of the dignity 
 of Ellenbro society, to know about her 
 doings. She insulted Eliza only yesterday 
 afternoon." 
 
 " Mrs. Courtney," Dr. Ellery said with his 
 customary dignity, " your husband is waiting 
 out here in my buggy to drive you home. I 
 think he wants to see you very particularly. 
 Perhaps he will tell you who the Baylors guest 
 is. He is an old friend of Richard s. Richard 
 has just returned lionif."
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 247 
 
 There is that in Dr. Ellery s voice which 
 silences Mrs. Courtney. " Is anything wrong 
 at home ? " she asks. 
 
 " I think your husband would like to see 
 you at once. Will you allow me ? " And with 
 old fashioned courtesy he offers her his arm to 
 walk to the gate. 
 
 The general sits with his head sunken in 
 his collar. As his outline appears against the 
 late evening sky, in the dusk, he looks old, old. 
 He holds the reins with listless hands. Dr. 
 Ellery puts Mrs. Courtney in beside him and 
 they drive away. What they say to each other 
 how that heart broken old father tells of the 
 wayward boy come home to die, taken in from 
 the fields by a woman they have despised is 
 not for our ears. 
 
 It is a weeping and shaken woman whom 
 Richard Baylor lifts down, and who goes in 
 with his father to say good by to the boy she 
 shut out from his home fifteen years ago. Reg 
 is there too, very solemn and ill at ease, ready 
 to fall at Mary Baylor s feet and ask her 
 forgiveness. But the opportunity to do so is
 
 248 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 
 
 not given him. The Baylors are up stairs, 
 alone, and Mary, drawing long breaths, after 
 her sobbing, is sitting nestled against her 
 husband s arm. 
 
 " I have been so unhappy here ! " she tells 
 him. 
 
 " It shall be no more," Richard Baylor says. 
 " It was all a mistake from the beginning. 
 We will go back now to our own life, and 
 Dolly shall be brought up in the world, not 
 in one little corner of it. The little flat is still 
 there in New York, and the theaters are open, 
 and everybody in town is back. We will 
 sell this old rat trap, and have money enough 
 to do as we like." 
 
 " Will you, Dick ? " she says, but she 
 says it wearily. She thinks of the dying 
 man down stairs; and then, too, there has 
 gone from Mary, in these weeks, some of 
 her youth. The purity of her joy in life 
 has been tainted. But she turns and kisses 
 him. 
 
 " It will be sweet not to think of othei 
 people s ways. I never want Dolly to know
 
 THE FIRST FAMILIES. 249 
 
 that there are any ways but the simple, natural 
 ones." 
 
 " And be a Bohemian to the end of her 
 days?" 
 
 " You can t be any more than happy," Mary 
 says. 
 
 THE END.
 
 Price reduced from 75 cents to 25 cents a volume. 
 
 "DERRINGFORTH" 
 
 By FRANK A. MUNSEY. 
 
 DKRRINGFORTH " is a story of today a story that bears 
 on a problem that every young woman must consider ; 
 a problem that every mother should consider. 
 
 Some Press Comments on (< Derringforth." 
 
 Sweet and true in sentiment, and told in a natural and elective manner. 
 The Book Buyer. 
 
 The misunderstandings of love have been a theme for writers since the 
 days of Eve, but rarely are they brought out with more fidelity to nature than 
 in this book. Bridgeport Standard. 
 
 " Derrinjrforth " is published in two volumes, handsomely 
 bound in cloth. Heretofore it has sold at $1.50, but in order to 
 make all our books uniform in price, it will from now on sell 
 at 50 cents, for the set. It can be had from your book seller or 
 the publisher at this price. 
 
 The first book in this series was 
 
 "A PRINCESS AND A WOMAN" 
 
 By ROBERT McDONALD. 
 
 IT is a stirring story of adventure in the eastern countries 
 of Europe, where the shifting kaleidoscope of political 
 intrigue is swayed by the strong hands of bold soldiers of 
 fortune and the resistless power of true love. It is a 
 fascinating story that holds the attention of the reader 
 from beginning to end. Originally published as a serial 
 in MUNSKY S MAGAZINE, much new matter has been 
 added by the author previous to its issue in book form. 
 It is beautifully bound in cloth, uniform with " The Affair 
 at Islington," and is for sale by book dealers everywhere 
 for 25 cents, or will be sent postpaid for that sum by the 
 publisher. 
 
 \ FRANK A. MUNSEY, 1U Fifth Ave., New York.
 
 NOW READY. 
 
 "The Affair at Islington 
 
 By MATTHEW WHITE, Jr. 
 
 ^PHIS story ran through MUNSEY S MAGAZINE in the 
 winter of 1894-95, but those who read it then will be 
 specially interested in seeing it in book form now, as several 
 new chapters have been added by the author. The plot 
 concerns itself with a man, his wife, and his old love. 
 
 The book is handsomely bound in cloth, uniform with 
 "A Princess and a Woman," and is sold for the same low 
 price, 25 cents, for which it may be obtained of book 
 dealers, or will be sent postpaid by the publisher. 
 
 The next book in this scries will be 
 
 "In the Reign of Boris" 
 
 By ROBERT McDONALD, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "A PRINCESS AND A WOMAN." 
 
 IT will be read) about the middle of August, and will be 
 uniform in style and price with "A Princess and a 
 Woman," to which story it is a sequel in so far as the 
 reappearance of Prince Curt is concerned. For the rest, it 
 is a striking narrative of the romantic school, and bristles 
 with action. 
 
 FRANK A. MUNSEY, m Fifth Ave., New York. 
 
 V~**\*^Av^-v a
 
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