his daughter when but little more than an infant so deeply was he moved to console the girl.
"Never mind, Nubbins—never mind, Honey—Forget her—We'll get ready and go North as soon as possible." He knew this was the one thing his daughter had set her heart on and had been planning for as well as dreaming of for some time and this appealed to him as the suggestion that might most easily cause her to forget the present unfortunate affair. "We'll get away the first of the week and then you'll forget. The winds up there'll bring back the calm to your soul and the color to your cheeks."
As he spoke he stroked the silver blond head that lay on his shoulder till the convulsive sobs grew fewer and fewer and finally quiet gripped Lida again.
Colonel Lauriston and his family differed much from most of those most noted in South Carolina largely because of the long line of illustrious ancestors through which the name had run from Colonial times to the present. Because of the boast of lineage in which blood was mingled that of Huguenots from the Carterets, the Oglethorpes, Cordovas and the Middletons, the family was one of the most exclusive in the state and only after the War of the States when the whole social fabric of the South was destroyed did the blood of less illustrious persons enter into the strain. In keeping with that background, Colonel Lauriston had insisted that his family preserve the purity of diction that would mark it from the remainder of the natives, hence neither he nor any of his household had allowed themselves to be affected by the nasal drawl so char-
