She didn't tell me what the note was about, naturally; but I could
imagine with what joy in the exercise of her art Hortense had constructed

that communication which must have accompanied the prompt return of the
card-case.

Then Mrs. Gregory's tongue became downright. "Since you're able to see so
much of her, why don't you tell her to marry that little steam-yacht

gambler? I'm sure he's dying to, and he's just the thing for her?"
"Ah," I returned, "Love so seldom knows what's just the thing for

marriage."
"Then your precocity theory falls," declared Mrs. St. Michael. And as she

went away from me along the street, I watched her beautiful stately walk;
for who could help watching a sight so good?

Charley, then, was no secret to John's people. Was John still a secret to
Charley? Could Hortense possibly have managed this? I hoped for a chance

to observe the two men with her during the visit of Mrs. Weguelin St.
Michael and her party to the church.

This party was already assembled when I arrived upon the spot appointed.
In the street, a few paces from the church, stood Bohm and Charley and

Kitty and Gazza, with Beverly Rodgers, who, as I came near, left them and
joined me.

"Oh, she's somewhere off with her fire-eater," responded Beverly to my
immediate inquiry for Hortense. "Do you think she was asked, old man?"

Probably not, I thought. "But she goes so well with the rest," I
suggested.

Beverly gave his chuckle. "She goes where she likes. She'll meet us here
when we're finished, I'm pretty sure."

"Why such certainty?"
"Well, she has to attend to Charley, you know!"

Mrs. Weguelin, it appeared, had met the party here by the church, but had
now gone somewhere in the immediate neighborhood to find out why the gate

was not opened to admit us, and to hasten the unpunctual custodian of the
keys. I had not looked for precisely such a party as Mrs. Weguelin's

invitation had gathered, nor could I imagine that she had fully
understood herself what she was gathering; and this I intimated to

Beverly Rodgers, saying:--
"Do you suppose, my friend, that she suspected the feather of the birds

you flock with?"
Beverly took it lightly. "Hang it, old boy, of course everybody can't be

as nice as I am! "But he took it less lightly before it was over.
We stood chatting apart, he and I, while Bohm and Charley and Kitty and

Gazza walked across the street to the window of a shop, where old
furniture was for sale at a high price; and it grew clearer to me what

Beverly had innocently brought upon Mrs. Weguelin, and how he had brought
it. The little quiet, particular lady had been pleased with his visit,

and pleased with him. His good manners, his good appearance, his good
English-trained voice, all these things must have been extremely to her

taste; and then--more important than they--did she not know about his
people? She had inquired, he told me, with interest about two of his

uncles, whom she had last seen in 1858. "She's awfully the right sort,"
said Beverly. Yes, I saw well how that visit must have gone: the gentle

old lady reviving in Beverly's presence, and for the sake of being civil
to him, some memories of her girlhood, some meetings with those uncles,

some dances with them; and generally shedding from her talk and manner
the charm of some sweet old melody--and Beverly, the facile, the

appreciative, sitting there with her at a correct, deferential angle on
his chair, admirablysympathetic and in good form, and playing the old

school. (He had no thought to deceive her; the old school was his by
right, and genuinely in his blood, he took to it like a duck to the

water.) How should Mrs. Weguelin divine that he also took to the nouveau
jeu to the tune of Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza? And so, to show

him some attention, and because she couldn't ask him to a meal, why, she
would take him over the old church, her colonial forefathers'; she would

tell him the little legends about them; he was precisely the young man to
appreciate such things--and she would be pleased if he would also bring

the friends with whom he was travelling.
I looked across the street at Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza. They

were now staring about them in all their perfection of stare: small
Charley in a sleek slate-colored suit, as neat as any little barber;

Bohm, massive, portentous, his strong shoes and gloves the chief note in
his dress, and about his whole firm frame a heavy mechanical strength, a

look as of something that did something rapidly and accurately when set
going--cut or cracked or ground or smashed something better and faster

than it had ever been cut or cracked or ground or smashed before, and
would take your arms and legs off if you didn't stand well back from it;

it was only in Bohm's eye and lips that you saw he wasn't made entirely
of brass and iron, that champagne and shoulders decolletes received a

punctual share of his valuable time. And there was Kitty, too, just the
wife for Bohm, so soon as she could divorce her husband, to whom she had

united herself before discovering that all she married him for, his old
Knickerbocker name, was no longer in the slightest degree necessary for

social acceptance; while she could feed people, her trough would be well
thronged. Kitty was neat, Kitty was trig, Kitty was what Beverly would

call "swagger "; her skilful tailor-made clothes sheathed her closely and
gave her the excellent appearance of a well-folded English umbrella; it

was in her hat that she had gone wrong--a beautiful hat in itself, one
which would have wholly become Hortense; but for poor Kitty it didn't do

at all. Yes, she was a well folded English umbrella, only the umbrella
had for its handle the head of a bulldog or the leg of a ballet-dancer.

And these were the Replacers whom Beverly's clear-sighted eyes saw
swarming round the temple of his civilization, pushing down the aisles,

climbing over the backs of the benches, walking over each other's bodies,
and seizing those front seats which his family had sat in since New York

had been New York; and so the wise fellow very prudently took every step
that would insure the Replacers' inviting him to occupy one of his own

chairs. I had almost forgotten little Gazza, the Italian nobleman, who
sold old furniture to new Americans. Gazza was not looking at the old

furniture of Kings Port, which must have filled his Vatican soul with
contempt; he was strolling back and forth in the street, with his head in

the air, humming, now loudly, now softly "La-la, la-la, E quando a la
predica in chiesa siederia, la-la-la-la;" and I thought to myself that,

were I the Pope, I should kick him into the Tiber.
When Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael came back with the keys and their

custodian, Bohm was listening to the slow, clear words of Charley, in
which he evidently found something that at length interested him--a

little. Bohm, it seemed, did not often speak himself: possibly once a
week. His way was to let other people speak to him when there were signs

in his face that he was hearing anything which they said, it was a high
compliment to them, and of course Charley could command Bohm's ear; for

Charley, although he was as neat as any barber, and let Hortense walk on
him because he looked beyond that, and purposed to get her, was just as

potent in the financial world as Bohm, could bring a borrowing empire to
his own terms just as skillfully as could Bohm; was, in short, a man

after Bohm's own--I had almost said heart: the expression is so
obstinately embedded in our language! Bohm, listening, and Charley,

talking, had neither of them noticed Mrs. Weguelin's arrival; they stood
ignoring her, while she waited, casting a timid eye upon them. But

Beverly, suddenly perceiving this, and begging her pardon for them,
brought the party together, and we moved in among the old graves.

"Ah!" said Gazza, bending to read the quaint words cut upon one of them,
as we stopped while the door at the rear of the church was being opened,

"French!"
"It was the mother-tongue of these colonists," Mrs. Weguelin explained to

him.
"Ah! like Canada!" cried Gazza. "But what a pretty bit is that!" And he

stood back to admire a little glimpse, across a street, between tiled
roofs and rusty balconies, of another church steeple. "Almost, one would

say, the Old World," Gazza declared.
"Our world is not new," said Mrs. Weguelin; and she passed into the

church.
Kings Port holds many sacred nooks, many corners, many vistas, that

should deeply stir the spirit and the heart of all Americans who know and