The Champneys chauffeur, greatly to Mrs. MacGregor’s terror and disapproval, seemed to live for speed alone; in consequence, one afternoon Mrs. MacGregor and Nancy very narrowly escaped dying for it.  Whereupon Mr. Champneys summarily dismissed the chauffeur and engaged in his place young Glenn Mitchell, accidentally brought to his notice.  Mr. Champneys congratulated himself upon the discovery of Glenn Mitchell.  To begin with, he was a South Carolinian, one of those well-born, penniless, ambitious young Southerners who come to New York to make their fortune.  One of his forebears had married a Champneys.  That was in ante bellum days, but South Carolina has a long memory, and this far-off tie immediately established the young fellow upon a footing of family relationship and of cousinly friendliness.  He was a personable youth of twenty, who had worked his way through high school and meant presently to go through the College of Physicians and Surgeons,—­his grandfather had been a distinguished physician, Mr. Champneys remembered.  The boy proposed to use his skill in handling a motor-car as a means toward that end.

Mr. Chadwick Champneys would gladly have paid Glenn’s college expenses out of his own pocket, but the young man, delicately sounded, politely but sturdily declined.  The next best thing the kindly old Carolinian could do, then, was to make the boy a member of his own household.  Hoichi had orders to prepare a room for Mr. Mitchell, and Mrs. MacGregor was advised that he would take his meals with the family.  She was at first inclined to be scandalized:  to bring your chauffeur to your own table was Americanism with a vengeance!  But when she met the young man, she was mollified.  This chauffeur was a gentleman, and in Mrs. MacGregor’s estimation a gentleman may do many things without losing caste.  She remembered that the perfectly decent younger son of a certain poverty-stricken nobleman had driven a car.  This young Mitchell was exceptionally good-looking in a nice, boyish, fresh-faced way, and she saw in his manner a youthful reflection of the courtliness which distinguished Mr. Chadwick Champneys.  He had a great deal of that indefinable something we call charm, and before she knew it Mrs. MacGregor was won over to him, and looked upon his presence as a distinct addition to the Champneys menage.

When he had been introduced to Nancy, she was mentioned as “My niece, Mrs. Champneys.”  Mrs. MacGregor called her “Anne.”  Mr. Champneys spoke to her as “Nancy,” and Glenn thought he must have been mistaken as to that “Mrs.”  There was no sign of a husband anywhere; neither was there any indication of widowhood.  Nobody mentioned Peter—­Mr. Champneys because he was more interested in talking about Glenn’s business than his own, on the occasions when he had time to talk about anything; Mrs. MacGregor, because she had never seen Peter, knew nothing at all about him, except that there was a nephew somewhere in the background of things, and wasn’t in the least