her alertly responsive in whatever field the talk happened to fall.  Apparently she knew the world—­his world—­better than he knew it himself:  she had summered on the North Shore and wintered in Washington.  She knew Paris, and when the conversation touched upon the Italian art-galleries he was led to wonder if he had gone through Italy with his eyes shut.  At the next turn of the talk he was forced to admit that not even Patricia herself could speak more intelligently of the English social problem; and when it came to the vital questions of the American moment he gasped again and wondered if he were awake—­if it could be possible that this out-of-place Georgian mansion and its charming mistress could be part and parcel of the West which had so far outgrown the boyhood memories.

Since all things mundane must have an end, the old butler with the white-fringed head came at last to show him the way to his luxurious lodgings on the second floor of the mansion.  With a touch of hospitality which carried Blount back to his one winter in the South, the hostess went with him as far as the stair-foot, and her “Good-night” was still ringing musically in his ears when the old negro lighted the candles in the guest-room, put another stick of wood on the small fire that was crackling and snapping cheerfully on the hearth, and bobbed and bowed his way to the door.  Blount saw his last chance for better information vanishing for the night, and once more broke with the traditions.

“Uncle Barnabas, before you go, suppose you tell me where I am,” he suggested.  “Whose house is this?”

The old man stopped on the threshold, chuckling gleefully.  “A-ain’t you know dat, sah?—­a-ain’t de mistis done tell you dat?  You’s at Wa’trace Hall—­Mahsteh Majah’s new country-house; yes, sah; dat’s whah you is—­kee-hee!”

“And who is ’Master Major’?” pressed Blount, whose bewilderment grew with every fresh attempt to dispel it.

“A-ain’t she tell you dat?—­kee-hee!  Ev’body knows Mahsteh Majah; yes, sah.  If de mistis ain’t tell you, ol’ Barnabas ain’t gwine to—­no, sah.  Ah’ll bring yo’-all’s coffee in de mawnin’; yes, sah—­good-night, sah—­kee-hee!” And the door closed silently upon the wrinkled old face and the bobbing head.

Having nothing else to do, Blount went to bed, but sleep came reluctantly.  Life is said to be full of paper walls thinly dividing the commonplace from the amazing; and he decided that he had surely burst through one of them when he had given place to the vagrant impulse prompting him to go horseback-riding when he should have gone comfortably to bed in his sleeper to wait for the track-clearing.

Whither had a curiously bizarre fate led him?  Where was “Wartrace Hall,” and who was “Mahsteh Majah”?  Who was the winsome little lady who looked as if she might be twenty, and had all the wit and wisdom of the ages at her tongue’s end—­who had held him so nearly spellbound over the teacups that he had entirely lost sight of everything but his hospitable welcome?