"The Greek had a good deal of trouble buying the place," said Melicent slowly.
"He didn't have enough money?" asked Calvin.
"No; he had plenty of money. His trouble was to find any one to give him title; for all of Eben's heirs died before himself except old Mattie, who was his second cousin. She's insane in an asylum in Connecticut; but finally it was arranged so that she could give title," Melicent explained, with bosom rising and falling at the quick catch of her breath; and Calvin drew up in repulse of this decay and disappearance of his people. As instinct to combat it caught him, he felt full affinity with the girl beside him; he felt his helplessness alone, as she was feeling her helplessness alone to oppose this death of themselves; he felt hotly, as she also hotly was feeling, their power together to perpetuate their own.
But as he gazed at her, another image imposed itself—eager blue eyes and a white, beautiful brow with lovely shaping behind it, a posture of spirit and will, the Royle girl, as first he saw her, with her head up to fight.
Calvin looked away and after a few seconds, Melicent proceeded with him past the Polos place, talking of other matters.
On Saturday he journeyed to New Haven for the Harvard-Yale game, and when he was finding his seat in the huge bowl, surrounded by men of his own class, he started almost noticeably at sight of alert, slender, feminine shoulders and the back of a prettily poised head wearing a small, blue toque.
Although he had been speaking to a friend, he became mute for the moment in which he imagined that this was the Royle girl; and even after she turned her face, and he saw that she was a disappointing person, he kept glancing at her; and when the teams came on the field and commenced the spectacle of the game, with seventy
