Her father, a rich banker, had been dead two years. Her mother had died when she was a child; she could barely remember her. But there was the old home—without much difficulty she recalled its 1873 white brick outlines, great bow-windows projecting from almost every room, the turrets and cupolas, the roof of slate, and the tall white brick chimneys—and there was her sister Lou. Lou she had seen occasionally, but she had met her in London or Paris, where this spinster sister seemed strangely ill at ease and out of place. Lou had none of the adaptability of the Countess, none of the latter's graceful worldliness. She was as plain and commonplace as a female robin humbly chirping beside its better-feathered mate. In Paris she was entirely out of the picture. In Maple Valley, on the other hand, Lou held a position of considerable prominence, based on race and money and permanent residence. But even in Paris, little as the two had in common, the Countess had not found her sister unsympathetic. Lou's presence had the soothing virtue of making Ella feel younger, reminding her of the days when they had attended college together at Cornell in Mt. Vernon. It had even amused her to listen to Lou's chatter about her neighbours and friends, people whose names never entered the Countess's mind except when she was with her sister, and while Lou would never have been able to understand the Countess's life or fit into it, she never asked uncomfortable questions, largely, the Count-
