“Oh, not so bad as that,” said Mrs. Wentworth.  “Now you sit down there and get acquainted with each other.”

So Keith sat down by Miss Brooke, and she was soon telling him of her niece, who, she said, was always talking of him and his father.

“Is she as pretty as she was as a child?” Keith asked.

“Yes—­much too pretty; and she knows it, too,” smiled the old lady.  “I have to hold her in with a strong hand, I tell you.  She has got her head full of boys already.”

Other callers began to appear just then.  It was Mrs. Wentworth’s day, and to call on Mrs. Wentworth was in some sort the cachet of good society.  Many, it was true, called there who were not in “society” at all,—­serene and self-contained old residents, who held themselves above the newly-rich who were beginning to crowd “the avenues” and force their way with a golden wedge,—­and many who lived in splendid houses on the avenue had never been admitted within that dignified portal.  They now began to drop in, elegantly dressed women and handsomely appointed girls.  Mrs. Wentworth received them all with that graciousness that was her native manner.  Miss Brooke, having secured her “new cap,” was seated at her side, her faded face tinged with rising color, her keen eyes taking in the scene with quite as much avidity as Gordon’s.  Gordon had fallen back quite to the edge of the group that encircled the hostess, and was watching with eager eyes in the hope that, among the visitors who came in in little parties of twos and threes, he might find the face for which he had been looking.  The name Wickersham presently fell on his ear.

“She is to marry Ferdy Wickersham,” said a lady near him to another.  They were looking at a handsome, statuesque girl, with a proud face, who had just entered the room with her mother, a tall lady in black with strong features and a refined voice, and who were making their way through the other guests toward the hostess.  Mrs. Wentworth greeted them cordially, and signed to the elder lady to take a seat beside her.

“Oh, no; she is flying for higher game than that.”  They both put up their lorgnons and gave her a swift glance.

“You mean—­” She nodded over toward Mrs. Wentworth.

“Yes.”

“Why, she would not allow him to.  She has not a cent in the world.  Her mother has spent every dollar her husband left her, trying to get her off.”

“Yes; but she has spent it to good purpose.  They are old friends.  Mrs. Wentworth does not care for money.  She has all she needs.  She has never forgotten that her grandfather was a general in the Revolution, and Mrs. Caldwell’s grandfather was one also, I believe.  She looks down on the upper end of Fifth Avenue—­the Wickershams and such.  Don’t you know what Mrs. Wentworth’s cousin said when she heard that the Wickershams had a coat-of-arms?  She said, ‘Her father must have made it.’”

Something about the placid voice and air of the lady, and the knowledge she displayed of the affairs of others, awoke old associations in Keith, and turning to take a good look at her, he recognized Mrs. Nailor, the inquiring lady with the feline manner and bell-like voice, who used to mouse around the verandah at Gates’s during Alice Yorke’s convalescence.