“A strange family; an utterly incomprehensible race.  And Mr.
   Cardross says that it happened to his father’s father; and his
   father before him died by his own hand!

* * * * *

   “Now there is little more news to write you—­little more that
   could interest you because you care only to hear about Shiela,
   and that is perfectly reasonable.”

“However, what there is of news I will write you as faithfully as I have done ever since I came here on your service under pretence of fighting gout which, Heaven be praised, has never yet waylaid me!—­unberufen!”

“So, to continue:  the faithful three, Messieurs Classon, Cuyp, and Vetchen, do valiantly escort me on my mountain rides and drives.  They are dears, all three, Garry, and it does not become you to shrug your shoulders.  When I go to Palm Beach in January they, as usual, are going too.  I don’t know what I should do without them, Virginia having decided to remain in Europe this winter.

“Yes, to answer your question, Mr. Wayward expects to cruise as far South as Palm Beach in January.  I happen to have a note from him here on my desk in which he asks me whether he may invite you to go with him.  Isn’t it a tactful way of finding out whether you would care to be at Palm Beach this winter?

“So I shall write him that I think you would like to be asked.  Because, Garry, I do believe that it is all turning out naturally, inevitably, as it was meant to turn out from the first, and that, some time this winter, there can be no reason why you should not see Shiela again.

   “I know this, that Mr. Cardross is very fond of you—­that Mrs.
   Cardross is also—­that every member of that most wholesome family
   cares a great deal about you.

“As for their not being very fashionable people, their amiable freedom from social pretension, their very simple origin—­all that, in their case, affects me not at all—­where any happiness of yours is concerned.

“I do like old-time folk, and lineage smacking of New Amsterdam; but even my harmless snobbishness is now so completely out of fashion that nobody cares.  You are modern enough to laugh at it; I am not; and I still continue faithful to my Classons and Cuyps and Vetchens and Suydams; and to all that they stand for in Manhattan—­the rusty vestiges of by-gone pomp and fussy circumstance—­the memories that cling to the early lords of the manors, the old Patroons, and titled refugees—­all this I still cling to—­even to their shabbiness and stupidity and bad manners.

“Don’t be too bitter in your amusement, for after all, you are kin to us; don’t be too severe on us; for we are passing, Garry, the descendants of Patroon and refugee alike—­the Cuyps, the Classons, the Van Diemans, the Vetchens,