Jane Cable

Other guests arrived before Mrs. Cable made her appearance in the drawing-room. She had taken more time than usual with her toilet. It was impossible for her to hide the fact that the strain was telling on her perceptibly. The face that looked back into her eyes from the mirror on her dressing-table was not the fresh, warm one that had needed so little care a few short months before. There was a heaviness about the eyes and there were strange, persistent lines gathering under the soft, white tissues of her skin. But when she at last stepped into the presence of her guests, with ample apologies for her tardiness, she was the picture of life and nerve. So much for the excellent resources of her will.

Bansemer was the last to present himself for her welcome, lingering in the background until the others had passed.

"I'm so glad you could come. Indeed, it's a pleasure to---" She spoke clearly and distinctly as she extended her hand; but as she looked squarely into his eyes she thought him the ugliest man she ever had seen. Every other woman in the party was saying to herself that James Bansemer was strikingly handsome.

"Most pleasures come late in life to some of us," he returned, gallantly, and even Graydon Bansemer wished that he could have said it.

"Your father is a perfect dear," Jane said to him, softly. "It was not what he said just then that pleased me, but what he left unsaid."

"Father's no end of a good fellow, Jane. I'm glad you admire him."

"You are not a bit like him," she said reflectively.

"Thanks," he exclaimed. "You are not very flattering."

"But you are a different sort of a good fellow, that's what I mean. Don't be absurd," she cried in some little confusion.

"I'm like my mother, they say, though I don't remember her at all."

"Oh, how terrible it must be never to have known one's mother," said she tenderly.

"Or one's father," added James Bansemer, who was passing at that instant with Mrs. Cable. "Please include the father, Miss Cable," he pleaded with mock seriousness. Turning to Mrs. Cable, who had stopped beside him, he added: "You, the most charming of mothers, will defend the fathers, won't you?"

"With all my heart," she answered so steadily that he was surprised.

"I will include the father, Mr. Bansemer," said Jane, "if it is guaranteed that he possibly could be as nice and dear as one's mother. In that case, I think it would be--oh, dreadfully terrible never to have known him."

"And to think, Miss Cable, of the unfortunates who have known neither father nor mother," said Bansemer, senior, slowly, relentlessly. "How much they have missed of life and love!"