The simple face of the man before her flushed with foolish gratification at this old-fashioned, ambiguous flattery.  “Now look yer, Belle,” he said, chuckling, “if you’re talking of old times and you think I bear malice agin Spencer, why”—­

But Mrs. Tucker interrupted what might have been an inopportune sentimental retrospect with a finger of arch but languid warning.  “That will do!  I’m dying to know all about it, and you must stay to dinner and tell me.  It’s right mean you can’t see Spencer too; but he isn’t back from Sacramento yet.”

Grateful as a tete-a-tete with his old neighbor in her more prosperous surroundings would have been, if only for the sake of later gossiping about it, he felt it would be inconsistent with his pride and his assumption of present business.  More than that, he was uneasily conscious that in Mrs. Tucker’s simple and unaffected manner there was a greater superiority than he had ever noticed during their previous acquaintance.  He would have felt kinder to her had she shown any “airs and graces,” which he could have commented upon and forgiven.  He stammered some vague excuse of preoccupation, yet lingered in the hope of saying something which, if not aggressively unpleasant, might at least transfer to her indolent serenity some of his own irritation.  “I reckon,” he said, as he moved hesitatingly toward the door, “that Spencer has made himself easy and secure in them business risks he’s taking.  That ’ere Alameda ditch affair they’re talking so much about is a mighty big thing, rather too big if it ever got to falling back on him.  But I suppose he’s accustomed to take risks?”

“Of course he is,” said Mrs. Tucker gayly.  “He married me.”

The visitor smiled feebly, but was not equal to the opportunity offered for gallant repudiation.  “But suppose you ain’t accustomed to risks?”

“Why not?  I married him,” said Mrs. Tucker.

Mr. Calhoun Weaver was human, and succumbed to this last charming audacity.  He broke into a noisy but genuine laugh, shook Mrs. Tucker’s hand with effusion, said, “Now that’s regular Blue Grass and no mistake!” and retreated under cover of his hilarity.  In the hall he made a rallying stand to repeat confidentially to the servant who had overheard them, “Blue Grass all over, you bet your life,” and, opening the door, was apparently swallowed up in the tempest.

Mrs. Tucker’s smile kept her lips until she had returned to her room, and even then languidly shone in her eyes for some minutes after, as she gazed abstractedly from her window on the storm-tossed bay in the distance.  Perhaps some girlish vision of the peaceful Blue Grass plain momentarily usurped the prospect; but it is to be doubted if there was much romance in that retrospect, or that it was more interesting to her than the positive and sharply cut outlines of the practical life she now led.  Howbeit she soon forgot this fancy in lazily watching a boat