“You didn’t tell me where you were yesterday, St. George,” she observed at breakfast; “did you meet any one who is likely to be of use?  I remember Beverly Pierce told me that everything had to come through introductions in the North.”

He looked at her steadily a moment before replying, taking in all the lovely details of her appearance behind the coffee tray—­the morning sunlight on her white hair and on the massive, hand-beaten, old silver service, the solitary rose he had purchased in the street standing between them in a slender Bohemian vase, brought from the rare old china in the press just at her back, the dainty hemstitching on her collar and cuffs of fine thread cambric, and lastly the vivid spot of color made by the knitting she had laid aside.

“I met Laura Wilde,” he answered presently, “but as you never read poetry you can’t understand just what it means.”

As she held the cream jug poised above his coffee cup Mrs. Trent smiled back at him with a placid wonder.

“Who is she, my son?  A lady—­I mean a real one?”

“Oh, yes, sterling.”

“But she writes verse you say!  Is it improper?”

His eyes shone with amusement.  “Improper!  Why, what an idea!”

“I’m sure I don’t know how it is,” responded his mother, carefully measuring with her eye the correct allowance of cream, “but somehow women always seem to get immodest when they take to verse.  It’s as if they went into it for the express purpose of airing their improprieties.”

“I say!” he exclaimed, with gentle mockery, “have you been reading ‘Sappho’ at your age?”

She continued to regard him blandly, without so much as a flicker of humour in her serene blue eyes.  “Your grandfather used to be very fond of quoting something from ‘Sappho,’” she returned thoughtfully, “or was it from Mr. Pope?  I can’t remember which or what it was except that it was hardly the kind of thing you would recite to a lady.”

Trent laughed good-humouredly as he received his coffee cup.

“Well you can’t point a moral with Miss Wilde,” he rejoined, “you’d be at liberty to recite her to anybody who had the sense to understand her.”

“Is she very deep?”

“She’s profound—­she’s wonderful—­she’s a genius.”

Mrs. Trent shook her head a little doubtfully.  “I don’t see that a woman has any business to be a genius,” she remarked.  “And I can’t help being prejudiced against women writers, your father always was.  It’s as if they really pretended to know as much as a man.  When they publish books I suppose they expect men to read them and that in itself is a kind of conceit.”

Trent yielded the point as he helped himself to the cakes brought in by an old negro servant.

“Well, I shan’t ask Miss Wilde to call on you,” he laughed, “so you won’t be apt to run across the learned of your sex.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t mind myself,” responded the old lady, with amiability, “but I do hate to have you thrown with women that you wouldn’t meet at home.”