If you could have seen Josiah Spencer that day you might have thought that the bullet had grazed his own poor heart.

“It’s God’s punishment,” he said over and over.  “For seven generations there has been a Spencer & Son—­a trust that was left to me by my father that I should pass it on to my son.  And what have I done...!”

Whereupon he made a gesture that wasn’t far from despair—­and in that gesture, such as only those can make who know in their hearts that they have shot the albatross, this preface brings itself to a close and at last my story begins.

CHAPTER I

“Patty,” said Miss Cordelia one morning, “have you noticed Josiah lately?”

“Yes,” nodded Miss Patricia, her eyes a little brighter than they should have been.

“Do you know,” continued the other, her voice dropping to a whisper, “I’m afraid—­if he keeps on—­the way he is—­”

“Oh, no, Cordelia!  You know as well as I do—­there has never been anything like that in our family.”

Nevertheless the two sisters looked at each other with awe-stricken eyes, and then their arms went around each other and they eased their hearts in the immemorial manner.

“You know, he worries because we are the last of the Spencers,” said Cordelia, “and the family dies with us.  Even if you or I had children, I don’t think he would take it so hard—­”

A wistful look passed over their faces, such as you might expect to see on those who had repented too late and stood looking through St. Peter’s gate at scenes in which they knew they could never take a part.

“But I am forty-eight,” sighed Cordelia.

“And I—­I am fifty—­”

The two sisters had been writing when this conversation started.  They were busy on a new generation of the Spencer-Spicer genealogy, and if you have ever engaged on a task like that, you will know the correspondence it requires.  But now for a time their pens were forgotten and they sat looking at each other over the gatelegged table which served as desk.  They were still both remarkably good-looking, though marked with that delicacy of material and workmanship—­reminiscent of old china—­which seems to indicate the perfect type of spinster-hood.  Here and there in their hair gleamed touches of silver, and their cheeks might have reminded you of tinted apples which had lightly been kissed with the frost.

And so they sat looking at each other, intently, almost breathlessly, each suddenly moved by the same question and each wishing that the other would speak.

For the second time it was Cordelia who broke the silence.

“Patty—!”

“Yes, dear?” breathed Patty, and left her lips slightly parted.

“I wonder if Josiah—­is too old—­to marry again!  Of course,” she hurriedly added, “he is fifty-two—­but it seems to me that one of the Spicers—­I think it was Captain Abner Spicer—­had children until he was sixty—­although by a younger wife, of course.”