Two Little Crimes

And then in a few weeks winter had come down from over the hills across
the fields and captured the city streets with a blare of northern winds,
which had been met and tempered by the mellow autumn breezes that had
been slow to retreat and abandon the gold and crimson banners still
fluttering on the trees. The snap and crackle of the Thanksgiving frost
had melted into a long lazy silence of a few more Indian summer days so
that, with lungs filled with the intoxicating draught of this late wine
of October, everybody had ridden, driven, hunted, golfed and lived
afield.

Then had come a second sweep of the northern winds and the city had
wakened out of its haze of desertion, turned up its lights, built up its
fires and put on the trappings of revelry and toil.

The major's logs were piled the higher and crackled the louder, and his
welcome was even more genial to the chosen spirits which gathered around
his library table. He and Mrs. Buchanan had succeeded in prolonging the
visit of Caroline Darrah Brown into weeks and were now holding her into
the winter months with loving insistence.

The open-armed hospitality with which their very delightful little world
had welcomed her had been positively entrancing to the girl and she had
entered into its gaieties with the joyous zest of the child that she was.
Her own social experiences had been up to this time very limited, for
she had come straight from the convent in France into the household of
her semi-invalided father. He had had very few friends and in a vaguely
uncomfortable way she had been made to realize that her millions made her
position inaccessible; but by these delightful people to whom social
position was a birthright, and wealth regarded only as a purchasing power
for the necessities and gaieties of life, she had been adopted with much
enthusiasm. Her delight in the round of entertainments in her honor and
the innocent and slightly bewildered adventures she brought the major for
consultation kept him in a constant state of interested amusement. Such
advice as he offered went far in preserving her unsophistication.