In the end the luncheon was no formidable affair.  Except for his fear, lest it should be the thin edge of the wedge of that American social life which it would be perilous for him to enter, he would have enjoyed this peep into a comfortable home, after his long exile from anything of the sort.  In building his house at Palermo, Mr. Jarrott had kept, in the outlines at least, to the old Spanish style of architecture, as being most suited to the history and climate of the country, though the wealthy Argentines themselves preferred to have their residences look—­like their dresses, jewels, and carriages—­as if they had come from Paris.  The interior patio was spacious, shaded with vines, and gay with flowers, while birds, caged or free, were singing everywhere.  The rooms surrounding it were airy and cool, and adapted to American standards of comfort.  In the dining-room mahogany, damask, crystal, and silver gave Strange an odd feeling of having been wafted back to the days and usages of the boyhood of Norrie Ford.

As the only guest he found himself seated on Mrs. Jarrott’s right, and opposite Miss Queenie Jarrott, the sister of the head of the house.  The host, as his manner was, spoke little.  Miss Jarrott, too, only looked at Strange across the table, smiling at him with her large, thin, upward-curving smile, comic in spite of itself, and with a certain pathos, since she meant it to be charged with sentiment.  Over the party at table, over the elderly men-servants who waited on them, over the room, over the patio, there was—­except for the singing of the birds—­the hush that belongs to a household that never hears the noise or the laughter of youth.

Mrs. Jarrott took the brunt of the conversation on herself She was a beautiful woman, faded now with the pallor that comes to northern people after a long residence in the sub-tropical south, and languid from the same cause.  Her handsome hazel eyes looked as if they had been used to weeping, though they conserved a brightness that imparted animation to her face.  A white frill round her throat gave the only relief to her plain black dress, but she wore many handsome rings, after the Argentine fashion as well as a brooch and earrings of black pearls.

She began by asking her guest if it was true, as Mr. Jarrott had informed her, that he was not one of the Stranges of Virginia.  She thought he must be.  It would be so odd if he wasn’t.  There were Stranges in Virginia, and had been for a great many generations.  In fact, her own family, the Colfaxes, had almost intermarried with them.  When she said almost, she meant that they had intermarried with the same families—­the Yorkes, the Endsleighs and the Poles.  If Mr. Strange did belong to the Virginia Stranges, she was sure they could find relatives in common.  Oh, he didn’t?  Well, it seemed really as if he must.  If Mr. Strange came from New York, he probably knew the Wrenns.  Her own mother was a Wrenn.  She had been Miss Wrenn