He did not, in fact, mention his assistant’s name at all, and yet he did not seem surprised when Professor Saunders, coming to the Sunday evening rehearsal of the quartet, needed no introduction to his sister, but drew a chair up with the evident intention of devoting all his conversation to her.  For a time this overt intention was frustrated by old Reinhardt, smitten with an admiration as unconcealed for the beautiful stranger.  In the interval before the arrival of the later members of the quartet, he fluttered around her like an ungainly old moth, racking his scant English for complimentary speeches.  These were received by Aunt Victoria with her best calm smile, and by Professor Saunders with open impatience.  His equanimity was not restored by the fact that there chanced to be rather more general talk than usual that evening, leaving him but small opportunity for his tete-a-tete.

It began by the arrival of Professor Kennedy, a little late, delayed at a reunion of the Kennedy family.  He was always reduced to bilious gloom by any close contact with that distinguished, wealthy, and much looked-up-to group of citizens of La Chance, and this evening he walked into the front door obviously even more depressed than usual.  The weather had turned cool, and his imposingly tall old person was wrapped in a cape-overcoat.  Sylvia had no fondness for Professor Kennedy, but she greatly admired his looks and his clothes, and his handsome, high-nosed old face.  She watched him wrestle himself out of his coat as though it were a grappling enemy, and was not surprised at the irritability which sat visibly upon his arching white eyebrows.  He entered the room trailing his ’cello-bag beside him and plucking peevishly at its drawstrings, and although Aunt Victoria quite roused herself at the sight of him, he received his introduction to her with reprehensible indifference.  He sank into a chair and looked sadly at the fire, taking the point of his white beard in his long, tapering fingers.  Professor Marshall turned from the piano, where he sat, striking A for the conscientious Bauermeister to tune, and said laughingly, “Hey there, Knight of the Dolorous Countenance, what vulture is doing business at the old stand on your liver?”

Professor Kennedy crossed one long, elegantly slim leg over the other, “I’ve been dining with the Kennedy family,” he said, with a neat and significant conciseness.

“Anything specially the matter with the predatory rich?” queried Marshall, reaching for his viola-case.

Professor Kennedy shook his head.  “Alas! there’s never anything the matter with them. Comme le diable, ils se portent toujours bien.”

At the purity of accent with which this embittered remark was made, Mrs. Marshall-Smith opened her eyes, and paid more attention as the old professor went on.

“The last of my unmarried nieces has shown herself a true Kennedy by providing herself with a dolichocephalic blond of a husband, like all the others.  The dinner was given in honor of the engagement.”