"Every society has its mumbo-jumbo to keep it in order," said
Arkwright. "She's ours.... I'm dead tired. You've done enough for
one night. It's a bad idea to stay too long; it creates an
impression of frivolity. Come along!"
Craig went, reluctantly, with several halts and backward glances
at the old lady of the ebon staff.
CHAPTER III
A DESPERATE YOUNG WOMAN
The house where the Severances lived, and had lived for half a
century, was built by Lucius Quintus Severence, Alabama planter,
suddenly and, for the antebellum days, notably rich through a
cotton speculation. When he built, Washington had no distinctly
fashionable quarter; the neighborhood was then as now small, cheap
wooden structures where dwelt in genteel discomfort the families
of junior Department clerks. Lucius Quintus chose the site partly
for the view, partly because spacious grounds could be had at a
nominal figure, chiefly because part of his conception of
aristocracy was to dwell in grandeur among the humble. The
Severence place, enclosed by a high English-like wall of masonry,
filled the whole huge square. On each of its four sides it put in
sheepish and chop-fallen countenance a row of boarding houses.
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