“If you were a woman,” she said, “you’d know by her clothes, and the pink of her cheeks, and by the way she does her hair—­she’s just a little too much of—­everything—­Barry.”

“There’s just enough of Delilah Jeliffe,” said Barry, “to keep a man guessing.”

“Guessing what?” Mary demanded with a spark in her eyes.

“Oh, just guessing,” easily.

“Whether she likes you?”

Barry nodded.

“But why should you want to know, Barry?  You’re not in love with her.”

His blue eyes danced.  “Love hasn’t anything to do with it, little solemn sister; it’s just in the—­game.”

Later they had a tilt over inviting Mary’s lodger.

“It seems so inhospitable to let him spend the day up there alone.”

“I don’t see how he could possibly expect to dine with us,” Barry said, hotly.  “You don’t know anything about him, Mary.  And I agree with Porter—­a man’s bank reference isn’t sufficient for social recognition.  And anyhow he may not have the right kind of clothes.”

“We are to have dinner at three o’clock,” she said, “just as mother always had it on Thanksgiving Day.  If you don’t want me to ask Roger Poole, I won’t.  But I think you are an awful snob, Barry.”

Her eyes were blazing.

“Now what have I done to deserve that?” her brother demanded.

“You haven’t treated him civilly,” Mary said.  “In a sense he’s a guest in our house, and you haven’t been up to his rooms since he came—­and he’s a gentleman.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I do.”

“Yet the other day you hinted that Delilah Jeliffe wasn’t a lady, not in your sense of the word—­and that I couldn’t see the difference because was a man.  I’ll let you have your opinion of Delilah Jeliffe if you’ll let me have mine of Roger Poole.”

So Mary compromised by having Roger down for the evening.  “We shall be just a family party for dinner,” she said.  “But later, we are asking some others for candle-lighting time.  We want everybody to come prepared to tell a story or recite, or to sing, or play—­in the dark at first, and then with the candles.”

His pride urged him to refuse—­to spurn this offer of hospitality from the girl who had once forgotten that he was in the house!

But as he stood there on the threshold of the Tower Rooms, her smile seemed to draw him, her voice called him, and he was young—­and desperately lonely.

So as he dressed carefully on Thanksgiving afternoon, he had a sense of exhilaration.  For one night he would let himself go.  He would be himself.  No one should snub him.  Snubs came from self-consciousness—­he who was above them need not see them.

When at last he entered the drawing-room, it was unillumined except for the flickering flame of a fire of oak logs.  The guests, assembling wraith-like among the shadows, were given, each, an unlighted candle.