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Duncan Coppered felt that his father’s second marriage was a great mistake. He never said so; that would not have been Duncan’s way. But he had a little manner of discreetly compressing his lips, when, the second Mrs. Coppered was mentioned, eying his irreproachable boots, and raising his handsome brows, that was felt to be significant. People who knew and admired Duncan–and to know him was to admire him–realized that he would never give more definite indications of filial disapproval than these. His exquisite sense of what was due his father’s wife from him would not permit it. But all the more did the silent sympathy of his friends go out to him.

To Harriet Culver he said the one thing that these friends, comparing notes, considered indicative of his real feeling. Harriet, who met him on the Common one cold afternoon, reproached him, during the course of a slow ride, for his non-appearance at various dinners and teas.

“Well, I’ve been rather bowled over, don’t you know? I’ve been getting my bearings,” said Duncan, simply.

“Of course you have!” said Harriet, with an expectant thrill.

“I’d gotten to count on monopolizing the governor,” pursued Duncan, presently, with a rueful smile. “I shall feel no end in the way for a while, I’m afraid, Of course, I didn’t think Dad would always keep”-his serious eyes met Harriet’s–“always keep my mother’s place empty; but this came rather suddenly, just the same.”

“Had your father written you?” said Harriet, confused between fear of saying the wrong thing and dread of a long silence.

“Oh, yes!” Duncan attempted an indifferent tone. “He had written me in August about meeting Miss Charteris and her little brother in Rome, you know, and how much he liked her. Her brother was an invalid, and died shortly after; and then Dad met her again in Paris, quite alone, and they were married immediately.”

He fell silent. Presently Harriet said daringly: “She’s–clever; she’s gifted, isn’t she?”

“I think you were very bold to say that, dear!” said Mrs. Van Winkle, when Harriet repeated this conversation, some hours later, in the family circle.

“Oh, Aunt Minnie, I had to–to see what he’d say.”

“And what did he say?” asked Harriet’s mother,

“He looked at me gravely, you know, until I was ashamed of myself,” the girl confessed, “and then he said: ‘Why, Hat, you must know that Mrs. Coppered was a professional actress?'”

“And a very obscure little actress, at that,” finished Mrs. Culver, nodding.

“Pacific Coast stock companies or something like that,” said Harriet. “Well, and then, after a minute, he said, so sadly, ‘That’s what hurts, although I hate myself for letting it make a difference.'”

“Duncan said that?” Mrs. Van Winkle was incredulous.

“Poor boy! With one aunt Mrs. Vincent-Hunter and the other an English duchess! The Coppereds have always been among Boston’s best families. It’s terrible,” said Mrs. Culver.

“Well, I think it is,” the girl agreed warmly. “Judge Clyde Potter’s grandson, and brought up with the very nicest people, and sensitive as he is–I think it’s just too bad it should be Duncan!”

“There’s no doubt she was an actress, I suppose, Emily?”

“Well,” said Harriet’s mother, “it’s not denied.” She shrugged eloquently.

“Shall you call, mother?”

“Oh, I shall have to once, I suppose. The Coppereds, you know. Every one will call on her for Carey’s sake,” said Mrs. Culver, sighing.

Every one duly called on Mrs. Carey Coppered, when she returned to Boston; and although she made her mourning an excuse for declining all formal engagements, she sent out cards for an “at home” on a Friday in January. She was a thin, graceful woman, with the blue-black Irish eyes that are set in with a sooty finger, and an unexpectedly rich, deep voice. Her quiet, almost diffident manner was obviously accentuated just now by her recent sorrow; but this did not conceal from her husband’s friends the fact that the second Mrs. Coppered was not of their world. Everything charming she might be, but to the manner born she was not. They would not meet her on her own ground, she could not meet them on theirs. In her own home she listened like a puzzled, silenced child to the gay chatter that went on about her.