wife, also young and energetic, had gone out “to get whatever she liked.”  Trained in a simple school during the war, and brought up in the formal purity of high-ceiled rooms furnished in Chippendale and Sheraton, her natural tastes were, nevertheless, as ornate as the interiors of the New York shops.  Though the blood of colonial heroes ran in her veins, she was still the child of her age, and her age prided itself upon being entirely modern in all things from religion to furniture.

As she sat there behind the mammoth coffee urn, from which a spiral of steam floated, her handsome face irradiated the spirit of kindness.  Because of her rather short figure, she appeared at her best when she was sitting, and now, with her large, tightly laced hips hidden beneath the table and her firm, jet-plastered bosom appearing above it, she presented a picture of calm and matronly beauty.  Not once did she seem to think of herself or her own breakfast.  Even while she buttered her toast and drank her steaming coffee, her bright blue eyes travelled unceasingly over the table, first to her husband’s plate, then to Gabriella’s, then to her son’s.  It was easy to see that she was the dominant and vital force in the household.  She ruled Archibald, less indirectly perhaps, but quite as consistently as Cousin Pussy ruled Cousin Jimmy.

“My dear, you must eat your breakfast,” she said urgently to her daughter-in-law.  “Archibald, let me give you your second cup of coffee.  Remember what a trying day you have before you, and make a good breakfast.  It is so hard to get him to eat,” she explained to Gabriella; “I have to coax him to drink his two cups of coffee, for if he doesn’t he is sure to come home with a headache.”

“Well, give me a cup, Evelyn,” replied Mr. Fowler, in his gentle voice, yielding apparently to please her.  In his youth he must have been very handsome, Gabriella thought; but now, though he still retained a certain distinction, he had the look of a man who has been drained of his vitality.  What surprised her—­for she had heard him described as “a hard man in business”—­was the suggestion of the scholar in his appearance.  With his narrow, carefully brushed head, his dreamy and rather wistful blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, his stooping, slender shoulders, and his long, delicate hands covered with prominent veins, he ought to have been either a poet or a philosopher.

“You must be happy with us, my dear,” he had said to Gabriella, showing a minute later such gentle eagerness to return to a part of the newspaper which Gabriella had never read and did not understand, that his wife remarked pityingly:  “Read your paper, Archibald, and don’t let our chatter disturb you.  There are a thousand things I want to say to the children.”

“Well, it’s time for me to be going, Evelyn,” Mr. Fowler responded, reluctantly folding the pages; “I’ll look into this on the way down.”

“Remember, dear, that Judge Crowborough is coming to dinner.”