He was right, as he always was, unerringly.  Consorting with all the Charleys, and the Bohms, and the Cohns, and the Kitties hadn’t taken the fine edge from Beverly’s good inheritance and good bringing up; his instinct had survived his scruples, making of him an agile and charming cynic, whom you could trust to see the right thing always, and never do it unless it was absolutely necessary; he would marry any amount of Kitties for their money, and always know that beside his mother and sisters they were as dirt; and he would see to it that his children took after their father, went to school in England for a good accent and enunciation, as he had done, went to college in America for the sake of belonging in their own country, as he had done, and married as many fortunes, and had as few divorces, as possible.

“Who was that girl on the bridge?” he now inquired as we reached the steps of the post-office; and when I had told him again, because he had asked me about Eliza La Heu at the time, “She’s the real thing,” he commented.  “Quite extraordinary, you know, her dignity, when poor old awful Charley was messing everything—­he’s so used to mere money, you know, that half the time he forgets people are not dollars, and you have to kick him to remind him—­yes, quite perfect dignity.  Gad, it took a lady to climb up and sit by that ragged old darky and take her dead dog away in the cart!  The cart and the darky only made her look what she was all the more.  Poor Kitty couldn’t do that—­she’d look like a chambermaid!  Well, old man, see you again.”

I stood on the post-office steps looking after Beverly Rodgers as he crossed Court Street.  His admirably good clothes, the easy finish of his whole appearance, even his walk, and his back, and the slope of his shoulders, were unmistakable.  The Southern men, going to their business in Court Street, looked at him.  Alas, in his outward man he was as a rose among weeds!  And certainly, no well-born American could unite with an art more hedonistic than Beverly’s the old school and the nouveau jeu!

Over at the other corner he turned and stood admiring the church and gazing at the other buildings, and so perceived me still on the steps.  With a gesture of remembering something he crossed back again.

“You’ve not seen Miss Rieppe?”

“Why, of course I haven’t!” I exclaimed.  Was everybody going to ask me that?

“Well, something’s up, old boy.  Charley has got the launch away with him—­and I’ll bet he’s got her away with him, too.  Charley lied this morning.”

“Is lying, then, so rare with him?”

“Why, it rather is, you know.  But I’ve come to be able to spot him when he does it.  Those little bulgy eyes of his look at you particularly straight and childlike.  He said he had to hunt up a man on business—­V-C Chemical Company, he called it—­”

“There is such a thing here,” I said.

“Oh, Charley’d never make up a thing, and get found out in that way!  But he was lying all the same, old man.”