There's one or two
relations of mine would be glad to be in your shoes, but I don't know of
anything in the Bible or the Constitution of the United States which
forbids an old man from choosing the face he'll have opposite to him at
table."
"Or forbids the interchange of true sympathy--that priceless privilege,"
answered Selma, her liking for a sententious speech rising paramount
even to the pleasure caused her by the allusion to her personal
appearance. Nevertheless it was agreeable to be preferred to his female
cousins on the score of comeliness.
Accordingly, within six months of her husband's death, the transition to
Benham was accomplished, and Selma was able to encounter the
metaphorically open arms, referred to by Mrs. Earle, without feeling
that she was a less important person than when she had been whisked off
as a bride by Littleton, the rising architect. She was returning as the
confidential, protecting companion of a successful, self-made old man,
who was relying on her to make his new establishment a pleasure to
himself and a credit to the wide-awake city in which he had elected to
pass his remaining days. She was returning to a house on the River Drive
(the aristocratic boulevard of Benham, where the river Nye makes a broad
sweep to the south); a house not far distant from the Flagg mansion at
which, as Mrs.
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