As Mrs. Culpeper knocked at the door of Corinna’s shop, she noticed that the pine bough in the window had been replaced by bowls of growing narcissi.  For a moment her stern expression relaxed, and her face, framed in a bonnet of black straw with velvet strings, became soft and anxious.  Beneath the veil of white illusion which reached only to the tip of her small sharp nose, her eyes were suddenly touched with spring.

“How delicious the flowers smell,” she remarked when Corinna opened the door; and then, as she entered the room and glanced curiously round her, she asked incredulously, “Do people really pay money for these old illustrations, Corinna?”

“Not here, Cousin Harriet.  I bought these in London.”

“And they cost you something?”

“Some of these, of course, cost more than others.  That,” Corinna pointed to a mezzotint of the Ladies Waldegrave by Valentine Green, “cost a little less than ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand dollars!” Mrs. Culpeper gazed at the print as disapprovingly as if it were an open violation of the Eighteenth Amendment.  “We didn’t pay anything like that for our largest copy of a Murillo.  Well, I may not be artistic, but, for my part, I could never understand why any one should want an old book or an old picture.”  Sitting rigidly upright in one of the tapestry-covered chairs, she added condescendingly:  “Stephen admires this room very much.”

“Stephen,” remarked Corinna pleasantly, “is a dear boy.”

“Just now,” returned Stephen’s mother, with her accustomed air of duty unflinchingly performed, “he is giving us a great deal of anxiety.  Never before, not even when he was in the war, have I spent so many sleepless nights over him.”

“I am sorry.  Poor Stephen, what has he done?”

“I have always hoped,” observed Mrs. Culpeper firmly, “that Stephen would marry Margaret.”

“I am aware of that.”  A flicker of amusement brightened Corinna’s eyes.  “So, I think, is Stephen.”

“I have tried to be honest.  It seems to me that a mother’s wish should carry a great deal of weight in such matters.”

“It ought to,” assented Corinna, “but I’ve never heard of its doing so.”

“Everything would have been satisfactory if he had not allowed himself to be carried away by a foolish fancy.”

“I cannot imagine,” said Corinna primly, “that Stephen could ever be foolish.  It gives me hope of him.”

Impaling her, as if she had been a butterfly, with a glance as sharp as a needle, Mrs. Culpeper demanded sternly, “How much do you know of this affair, my dear?”

In spite of her natural courage Corinna was seized with a shiver of apprehension.  “Do you think it is an affair?” she asked.

“I think it is worse.  I think it is an infatuation.”

“What, Stephen?  Not really?” Corinna’s voice was mirthfully incredulous.

“I have seen the girl once or twice,” resumed Mrs. Culpeper, “and she seems to me objectionable from every point of view.”