Hayne had written to her niece that Cyrus would meet them with a “hack;” Cyrus was a sable factotum designated in Mrs. Hayne’s vocabulary as a “chore-man.” When the train entered the station he was, in fact, conspicuous on the platform, his smile shining like an open piano, while he proclaimed with abundant gesture the proximity of “de hack,” and Delia, descending from the train into his dusky embrace, found herself guiltily wishing that he could have been omitted from the function of their arrival. She could not help wondering what her husband’s valet would think of him. The valet was to be lodged at a hotel: Corbett himself had suggested that his presence might disturb the routine of Mrs. Hayne’s household, a view in which Delia had eagerly acquiesced. There was, however, no possibility of dissembling Cyrus, and under the valet’s depreciatory eye the Corbetts suffered him to precede them to the livery-stable landau, with blue shades and a confidentially disposed driver, which awaited them outside the station.

            During the drive to Mount Vernon Street Delia was silent; but as they approached her aunt’s swell-fronted domicile she said, hurriedly, “You won’t like the house.”

            Corbett laughed. “It’s the inmate I’ve come to see,” he commented.

            “Oh, I’m not afraid of her,” Delia almost too confidently rejoined.

            The parlor-maid who admitted them to the hall (a discouraging hall, with a large-patterned oil-cloth and buff walls stencilled with a Greek border) informed them that Mrs. Hayne was above; and ascending to the next floor they found her genial figure, supported on crutches, awaiting them at the drawing-room door. Mrs. Hayne was a tall, stoutish woman, whose bland expanse of feature was accentuated by a pair of gray eyes of such surpassing penetration that Delia often accused her of answering people’s thoughts before they had finished thinking them. These eyes, through the close fold of Delia’s embrace, pierced instantly to Corbett, and never had that accomplished gentleman been more conscious of being called upon to present his credentials. But there was no reservation in the uncritical warmth of Mrs. Hayne’s welcome, and it was obvious that she was unaffectedly happy in their coming.

            She led them into the drawing-room, still clinging to Delia, and Corbett, as he followed, understood why his wife had said that he would not like the house. One saw at a glance that Mrs. Hayne had never had time to think of her house or her dress. Both were scrupulously neat, but her gown might have been an unaltered one of her mother’s, and her drawing-room wore the same appearance of contented archaism. There was a sufficient number of arm-chairs, and the tables (mostly marble-topped) were redeemed from monotony by their freight of books; but it had not occurred to Mrs. Hayne to substitute logs for hard coal in her fireplace, nor to replace by more personal works of art the smoky expanses of canvas “after” Raphael and Murillo which lurched heavily forward from the walls. She had even preserved the knotty antimacassars on her high-backed armchairs, and Corbett, who was growing bald, resignedly reflected that during his stay in Mount Vernon Street he should not be able to indulge in any lounging.

              

 

 III.
 
 

            Delia held back for three days the question which burned her lip; then, following her husband upstairs after an evening during which Mrs. Hayne had proved herself especially comprehensive (even questioning Corbett upon the tendencies of modern French art), she let escape the imminent “Well?”

            “She’s charming,” Corbett returned, with the fine smile which always seemed like a delicate criticism.

            “Really?”

            “Really, Delia. Do you think me so narrow that I can’t value such a character as your aunt’s simply because it’s cast in different lines from mine? I once told you that she must be a bundle of pedantries, and you prophesied that my first sight of her would correct that impression. You were right; she’s a bundle of extraordinary vitalities. I never saw a woman more thoroughly alive; and that’s the great secret of living—to be thoroughly alive.”

            “I knew it; I knew it!” his wife exclaimed. “Two such people couldn’t help liking each other.”

            “Oh, I should think she might very well help liking me.”

            “She doesn’t; she admires you immensely; but why?”

            “Well, I don’t precisely fit into any of her ideals, and the worst part of having ideals is that the people who don’t fit into them have to be discarded.”

            “Aunt Mary doesn’t discard anybody,” Delia interpolated.

            “Her heart may not, but I fancy her judgment does.”

            “But she doesn’t exactly fit into any of your ideals, and yet you like her,” his wife persisted.

            “I haven’t any ideals,” Corbett lightly responded. “Je prends mon bien ou je le trouve; and I find a great deal in your Aunt Mary.”

            Delia did not ask Mrs. Hayne what she thought of her husband; she was sure that, in due time, her aunt would deliver her verdict; it was impossible for her to leave any one unclassified. Perhaps, too, there was a latent cowardice in Delia’s reticence; an unacknowledged dread lest Mrs. Hayne should range Corbett among the intermediate types.

            After a day or two of mutual inspection and adjustment the three lives under Mrs. Hayne’s roof lapsed into their separate routines. Mrs. Hayne once more set in motion the complicated machinery of her own existence (rendered more intricate by the accident of her lameness), and Corbett and his wife began to dine out and return the visits of their friends. There were, however, some hours which Corbett devoted to the club or to the frequentation of the public libraries, and these Delia gave to her aunt, driving with Mrs. Hayne from one committee meeting to another, writing business letters at her dictation, or reading aloud to her the reports of the various philanthropic, educational, or political institutions in which she was interested. She had been conscious on her arrival of a certain aloofness from her aunt’s militant activities; but within a week she was swept back into the strong current of Mrs.