So it came to pass that tutors and specialists replaced Kathleen in the schoolroom; and these ministered to the twin “poils,” who were now fretting through their thirteenth year, mad with desire for boarding-school.

Four languages besides their own were adroitly stuffed into them; nor were letters, arts, and sciences neglected, nor the mundane and social patter, accomplishments, and refinements, including poise, pose, and deportment.

Specialists continued to guide them indoors and out; they rode every morning at eight with a specialist; they drove in the Park between four and five with the most noted of four-in-hand specialists; fencing, sparring, wrestling, swimming, gymnastics, were all supervised by specialists in those several very important and scientific arts; and specialists also taught them hygiene:  how to walk, sit, breathe; how to masticate; how to relax after the manner of the domestic cat.

They had memory lessons; lessons in personal physiology, and in first aid to themselves.

Specialists cared for their teeth, their eyes, their hair, their skin, their hands and feet.

Everything that was taught them, done for them, indirectly educated them in the science of self-consideration and deepened an unavoidably natural belief in their own overwhelming importance.  They had not been born so.

But in the house of Seagrave everything revolved around and centred in them; everything began for them and ended for them alone.  They had no chance.

True, they were also instructed in theology and religion; they became well grounded in the elements of both,—­laws, by-laws, theory, legends, proverbs, truisms, and even a few abstract truths.  But there was no meaning in either to these little prisoners of self.  Seclusion is an enemy to youth; solitude its destruction.

When the twins were fifteen they went to their first party.  A week of superficial self-restraint and inward delirium was their preparation, a brief hour of passive bewilderment the realisation.  Dazed by the sight and touch and clamor of the throng, they moved and spoke as in a vision.  The presence of their own kind in such numbers confused them; overwhelmed, they found no voices to answer the call of happiness.  Their capacity to respond was too limited.

As in a dream they were removed earlier than anybody else—­taken away by a footman and a maid with decorous pomp and circumstance, carefully muffled in motor robes, and embedded in a limousine.

The daily papers, with that lofty purpose which always characterises them, recorded next morning the important fact that the famous Seagrave twins had appeared at their first party.

* * * * *

Between the ages of fifteen and sixteen the twins might have entered Harvard, for the entrance examinations were tried on both children, and both passed brilliantly.