She broke in impatiently on the panegyric. "I'm so thoroughly disgusted with the ways of politics, Lana, that I draw the line at a speech of nomination. You said you'd name him! Who is he?"

"Stewart Morrison."

"I thought so!" Mrs. Stanton's tone was vastly significant.

Lana flushed. The composure that she had been maintaining was losing its serenity and her friend noted that fact and became more irritable.

"My dear Lana, I gathered so much enlightenment from the twittering of those old friends of yours down-stairs that you'll not be obliged, I think, to break your most excellent rule of reticence in order to humor my impertinent curiosity in this instance!"

"Don't be sarcastic with me, Doris! I don't find it as funny as when you're caustic with other folks."

"There does seem to be a prevailing lack of humor in the affairs of this evening," acknowledged Mrs. Stanton. "We'll drop the subject, dear!"

"I don't like you to feel that I'm putting you to one side as my dearest friend--not in anything."

"If you haven't felt like being candid with me in a matter where I'd naturally be vitally interested, I can hardly expect you to pour out your heart about a dead-and-gone love-affair with a rustic up in these parts. I understood from the chatter of your old friends that it _is_ dead and gone. I can congratulate you on that proof of your newer wisdom, Lana. It shows that my counsels haven't been entirely wasted on you."

"It was dead and gone before you began to counsel me, Doris. It's not a matter of withholding confidence from you. Why should I talk about such things to anybody?"

"Oh, a discreet display of scalp-locks decorates a boudoir and interests one's friends," vouchsafed the worldly matron.

"Such confidences are atrocious!" Miss Corson displayed spirit.

"Now both of us are getting peppery, dear Lana, and I always reserve that privilege exclusively for myself in all my friendly relations. I have to keep a sharp edge on my tongue because folks expect me to perform the social taxidermy in my set, and it's only brutal and messy if done with a dull tool. Run and get your gloves! But take your own time in returning to me. There are still two of my fingers that need a further period of convalescence."

Mrs. Stanton promptly neglected her duties as a finger nurse the moment Miss Corson was out of the room. "Hibbert, ask one of the servants to find my brother and tell him I want to see him here. He will undoubtedly be located in some group where there is a rural gentleman displaying the largest banner of beard. My brother has an insatiable mania for laying bets with sporting young men that he can fondle any set of luxuriant whiskers without giving the wearer cause for offense."

Coventry answered his sister's call with prompt.i.tude.

"I'll keep you only a moment from your whisker-parterres, Cov! When you go back into that down-stairs garden please give some of those beards a good hard yank for my sake."

But young Mr. Daunt was serious and rebuked her. "This isn't any lark we're on up here, Dorrie! Dad needs to have everybody's good will and I'm doing my little best on the side-lines for him. And he isn't tickled to pieces by your quitting. It's a big project we're gunning through this legislature!"

"It may be so! It probably is! But I'm not sacrificing four fingers, a thumb, and a perfectly good arm for the cause and I'm not allowing public affairs to take my mind wholly off private matters. So here's at it! Are you and Lana formally engaged?"

"Well, I must say you're not abrupt or anything of the sort!"

"Certain semi-coaxing methods haven't seemed to succeed, and therefore I'm shooting the well, as our oil friend Whitaker puts it!"

"Simply for the sake of keeping our affectionate brother-and-sister relations on the safe and approved plane, I'll say it's none of your blamed business," declared Coventry. "On the other hand, in a purely tolerant and friendly way, I'll say that Lana and I are proceeding agreeably, I think, and dad told me the other day that the Senator talked as if the matrimonial bill might receive favorable consideration when duly reported from committee--meaning Lana and myself and--"

"Gas!" broke in Mrs. Stanton. "I shot and I get only gas! I'm looking for oil! Is there an actual and formal engagement, I ask?"

"Oh, say!" expostulated her brother, registering disgust. "The motion pictures have spoiled that sort of thing. They have to propose bang outright in the films because the fans can't be bothered by the nuances of courtship. But for a chap to get down on his knees these days in real life would make the girl laugh as loud as the fans would whoop if the hero in reel life stood on his head and popped the question. Nothing of that kind of formal stuff in my case, sis! Of course not!"

"There better be! You go ahead this very night and attend to it!"

"Where do you get your appointment as general manager of the matter, Dorrie? You certainly don't get it from me!"

"Leaving it to be inferred--"

"I leave nothing to be inferred," declared her brother, righteously indignant. "Dorrie, you absolutely must get off that habit of carving your own kin in order to keep up the edge of your tongue. I wouldn't as much as intimate it, by denying it, that you get your meddling commission from Lana. If this is all you wanted to talk about, I'll have to be going. This is my busy evening!"

"Just one moment! It's always the busiest man who has time to attend to one thing more! I'm a.s.suming that you love Lana."

"Conceded! You always did have a good eye in that line, Dorrie!"

"Then my advice, as an expert, ought to be respected. You go ahead and get a promise from Lana Corson. Then you'll have somebody working for your interests day and night."

"Who?"

"Her New England conscience!"

Young Mr. Daunt gave his sister a long, searching, and sophisticated stare. "I think I have a little the advantage of you, Dorrie. I met to-day this Mr. Stewart Morrison you're speaking of!"

"I haven't spoken of him! I haven't mentioned his name!"

"Oh, didn't you?" purred the brother. "Then I must have antic.i.p.ated what you were going to say, or else I read your mind for the name--and that only shows that the Daunt family's members are thoroughly _en rapport_, to use dad's favorite phrase when he's showing the strawberry mark on ideas and making the other fellow adopt 'em as his own children. And I have heard how Lana and Morrison have been twice engaged and twice estranged.

So, how about her New England conscience in the matter of a promise in love?"

"As I understand it, the New England conscience grows up with the possessor and comes of age and a.s.serts itself. You can't expect an infant or juvenile conscience to boss and control like a grown-up conscience.

Coventry, what kind of a man is Morrison?"

"A big, opinionated ramrod of a Scotchman who'd drive any girl to break her engagement a dozen times if she had promised as often as that."

Mrs. Stanton relaxed in her chair and sighed with relief. "Oh, from what she said about him--But no matter! I think you do know men very well, Cov!

I'll do no more worrying where he's concerned. Forgive me for advising you so emphatically."

"He'd boss any girl into breaking her engagement," continued Coventry, with conviction. "Any dreaming, wondering, restless girl, curious to find out for herself and afraid of restraint."

"I know the type. Impossible as husbands," averred Mrs. Stanton, a caustic and unwearying counselor of s.e.x independence.

"But there are some girls who grow up into real women, though you probably have hard work to believe that," said her brother, equally caustic in stating his opinions, "and they are waiting for the right man to come along and take sole possession of them, body and soul and affairs--when they are women! Then it isn't bossing any more! It's love, glorified!

Letting 'em have their own way would seem like neglect and indifference, and their hearts would be broken. They eat it up, sis, eat it up, that kind of love!"

His sister leaped from her chair. "How anybody with an ounce of brains can take stock in this caveman nonsense is more than I can understand!"

"It has nothing to do with brains, sis! It's in here!" He tapped his finger on his breast. "It was put in when the first heart started beating."

"But you listen to reason! No woman wants a--"

He put his hand up and broke in on her furious remonstrance. "If I listen to reason, sis, you'll have me against the ropes in thirty seconds. I admit that there's no reason why a woman should want it that way! Brains can argue us right out of the notion. I won't argue. But I don't want you to think I'm keeping anything away from you that a sister ought to know.

As my sister and as Lana's good friend, I'm sure you'll be glad to know that I love her with all my heart and I hope I haven't misunderstood her feelings in regard to me. I don't want to be too complacent, but I think she's still girl enough to welcome my kind of love and to take me for what I am."

He and his sister were thoroughly absorbed in their dialogue. Having summed up the situation in his final declaration, he turned hastily to leave the room and was a.s.sured, to his dismay, that Miss Corson had heard the declaration; she was at the threshold, her lips apart; she was plainly balancing a desire to flee against a more heroic determination to step in and ignore the situation and the words which had accompanied it.

Young Mr. Daunt manfully did his best to get that situation out of the chancery of embarra.s.sing silence.

"Lana, the three of us are too good friends to allow this foozle to make us feel altogether silly. Despite present appearances I don't go around making speeches on a certain subject. Nor will I lay it all on Dorrie by saying, 'The woman tempted me and I fell.'"