“She is a good player,” agreed Aunt Rebecca, “and a very pleasant person. You remember the epitaph, don’t you, Bertie? ‘She was so pleasant.’ Yet Janet has had a heap of trouble; but, after all, happiness is not a condition but a temperament; I suppose Janet has the temperament. She’s a good loser, too; and she never takes advantage of the rules.”
“She certainly loves a straight game,” reflected the colonel. “I confess I don’t like the kind of woman that is always grabbing a trick if some one plays out of the wrong hand.”
He said something of the kind to Millicent, obtaining but scant sympathy in that quarter.
“She’s deep, Bertie; I told you that,” was the only reply, “but I’m watching. I have reason for my feeling.”
“Maybe you have been misinformed,” ventured her brother-in-law with proper meekness.
“Not at all,” retorted she sharply. “I happen to know that she worked against me with the Daughters.”
“Daughters,” the colonel repeated inanely, “your daughters?”
“Certainly not! The Daughters of the Revolution.”
“It’s a mighty fine society, that; did a lot during the Spanish War. And you are the state president, aren’t you?”
“No, Rupert,” returned Mrs. Melville with dignity, “I am no longer state regent. By methods that would shame the most hardened men politicians I was defeated; why! didn’t you read about it?”