Rieppe had broken her engagement."
"And where did you hear that nonsense?" asked Mrs. Gregory.

My heart leaped, and I told her where.
"Oh, well! you will hear anything in a boarding-house. Indeed, that would

be a great deal too good to be true."
"May I ask where Miss Rieppe is all this while?"

"The last news was from Palm Beach, where the air was said to be
necessary for the General."

"But," Mrs. Weguelin repeated, "we have every reason to believe that she
is coming here in an automobile."

"We shall have to call, of course," added Mrs. Gregory to her, not to me;
they were leaving me out of it. Yes, these ladies were forgetting about

me in their using preoccupation over whatevercrisis it was that now hung
over John Mayrant's love affairs--a preoccupation which was evidently

part of Kings Port's universal buzz to-day, and which my joining them in
the street had merely mitigated for a moment. I did not wish to be left

out of it; I cannot tell you why--perhaps it was contagious in the local
air--but a veritablemadness of craving to know about it seized upon me.

Of course, I saw that Miss Rieppe was, almost too grossly and obviously,
"playing for time"; the health of people's fathers did not cause weekly

extensions of this sort. But what was it that the young lady expected
time to effect for her? Her release, formally, by her young man, on the

ground of his worldly ill fortune? Or was it for an offer from the owner
of the Hermana that she was waiting, before she should take the step of

formally releasing John Mayrant? No, neither of these conjectures seemed
to furnish a key to the tactics of Miss Rieppe and the theory that each

of these affianced parties was strategizing to cause the other to assume
the odium of breaking their engagement, with no result save that of

repeatedly countermanding a wedding-cake, struck me as belonging
admirably to a stage-comedy in three acts, but scarcely to life as we

find it. Besides, poor John Mayrant was, all too plainly, not
strategizing; he was playing as straight a game as the honest heart of a

gentleman could inspire. And so, baffled at all points, I said (for I
simply had to try something which might lead to my sharing in Kings

Port's vibrating secret):--
"I can't make out whether she wants to marry him or not."

Mrs. Gregory answered. "That is just what she is coming to see for
herself."

"But since her love was for his phosphates only--!" was my natural
exclamation.

It caused (and this time I did not expect it) my inveterate ladies to
consult each other's expressions. They prolonged their silence so much

that I spoke again:--
"And backing out of this sort of thing can be done, I should think, quite

as cleverly, and much more simply, from a distance."
It was Mrs. Weguelin who answered now, or, rather, who headed me off.

"Have you been able to make out whether he wants to marry her or not?"
"Oh, he never comes near any of that with me!"

"Certainly not. But we all understand that he has taken a fancy to you,
and that you have talked much with him."

So they all understood this, did they? This, too, had played its little
special part in the buzz? Very well, then, nothing of my private

impressions should drop from my lips here, to be quoted and misquoted and
battledored and shuttlecocked, until it reached the boy himself (as it

would inevitably) in fantastic disarrangement. I laughed. "Oh, yes! I
have talked much with him. Shakespeare, I think, was our latest subject."

Mrs. Weguelin was plainly watching for something to drop. "Shakespeare!"
Her tone was of surprise.

I then indulged myself in that most delightful sort of impertinence,
which consists in the other person's not seeing it. "You wouldn't be

likely to have heard of that yet. It occurred only before dinner to-day.
But we have also talked optimism, pessimism, sociology, evolution--Mr.

Mayrant would soon become quite--" I stopped myself on the edge of
something very clumsy.

But sharp Mrs. Gregory finished for me. "Yes, you mean that if he didn't
live in Kings Port (where we still have reverence, at any rate), he fit

would imbibe all the shallow quackeries of the hour and resemble all the
clever young donkeys of the minute."

"Maria!" Mrs. Weguelin murmurously expostulated.
Mrs. Gregory immediately made me a handsome but equivocal apology. "I

wasn't thinking of you at all!" she declared gayly; and it set me
doubting if perhaps she hadn't, after all, comprehended my impertinence.

"And, thank Heaven!" she continued, "John is one of us, in spite of his
present stubborn course."

But Mrs. Weguelin's beautiful eyes were resting upon me with that
disapproval I had come to know. To her, sociology and evolution and all

"isms" were new-fangled inventions and murky with offense; to touch them
was defilement, and in disclosing them to John Mayrant I was a corrupter

of youth. She gathered it all up into a word that was radiant with a kind
of lovely maternal gentleness:--

"We should not wish John to become radical."
In her voice, the whole of old Kings Port was enshrined: hereditary faith

and hereditary standards, mellow with the adherence of generations past,
and solicitous for the boy of the young generation. I saw her eyes soften

at the thought of him; and throughout the rest of our talk to its end her
gaze would now and then return to me, shadowed with disapproval.

I addressed Mrs. Gregory. "By his 'present stubborn course' I suppose you
mean the Custom House."

"All of us deplore his obstinacy. His Aunt Eliza has strongly but vainly
expostulated with him. And after that, Miss Josephine felt obliged to

tell him that he need not come to see her again until he resigned a
position which reflects ignominy upon us all."

I suppressed a whistle. I thought (as I have said earlier) that I had
caught a full vision of John Mayrant's present plight. But my imagination

had not soared to the height of Miss Josephine St. Michael's act of
discipline. This, it must have been, that the boy had checked himself

from telling me in the churchyard. What a character of sterner times was
Miss Josephine! I thought of Aunt Carola, but even she was not quite of

this iron, and I said so to Mrs. Gregory. "I doubt if there be any old
lady left in the North," I said, "capable of such antique severity."

But Mrs. Gregory opened my eyes still further. "Oh, you'd have them if
you had the negro to deal with as we have him. Miss Josephine," she

added, "has to-day removed her sentence of banishment."
I felt on the verge of new discoveries. "What!" I exclaimed, "and did she

relent?"
"New circumstances intervened," Mrs. Gregory loftily explained. "There

was an occurrence--an encounter, in fact--in which John Mayrant fittingly
punished one who had presumed. Upon hearing of it, this morning, Miss

Josephine sent a message to John that he might resume visiting her.
"But that is perfectly grand!" I cried in my delight over Miss Josephine

as a character.
"It is perfectly natural," returned Mrs. Gregory, quietly. "John has

behaved with credit throughout. He was at length made to see that
circumstances forbade any breach between his family and that of the other

young man. John held back--who would not, after such an insult?--but Miss
Josephine was firm, and he has promised to call and shake hands. My

cousin, Doctor Beaugarcon, assures me that the young man's injuries are
trifling--a week will see him restored and presentable again."

"A week? A mere nothing!" I answered "Do you know," I now suggested,
"that you have forgotten to ask me what I was thinking about when we

met?"
"Bless me, young gentleman! and was it so remarkable?"

"Not at all, but it partly answers what Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael asked
me. If a young man does not really wish to marry a young woman there are

ways well known by which she can be brought to break the engagement."
"Ah," said Mrs. Gregory, "of course; gayeties and irregularities--"

"That is, if he's not above them," I hastily subjoined.
"Not always, by any means," Mrs. Gregory returned. "Kings Port has been

treated to some episodes--"
Mrs. Weguelin put in a word of defence. "It is to be said, Maria, that

John's irregularities have invariably been conducted with perfect