His appeal had failed, and he accepted defeat with the sober courage his father had displayed in a greater surrender.
"Well, I suppose if everybody does it, it is all right," he conceded; and though he was not aware of it, he had compressed into this convenient axiom his whole philosophy of conduct.
As he crossed the room to the glowing fire and the black marble mantelpiece, which had supplanted the delicate Adam one of a less resplendent period, he wore an air that was at once gentle and haughty—the expression of a man who hopes that he is a Christian and knows that his blood is blue.
"Hasn't Stephen come in yet?" he inquired of his wife. "I thought I heard him upstairs."
She shook her head helplessly. "No, and I told him Margaret was coming. That is her ring now."
Mr. Culpeper looked at Mary Byrd. "I am sure that Margaret would clothe herself more discreetly," he remarked in a voice which sounded husky because he tried to make it facetious. "When I was a young man it was the fashion to compare women to flowers, and in these unromantic days I should call Margaret our last violet—"
A peal of laughter fell from the bright red lips of Mary Byrd. "It sounds as depressing as the last rose of summer," she cried, "and it's just as certain to be left on the stem—" Then she broke off, still pulsing with merriment, for the door opened slowly, and the last violet entered the room.