Less than kin

								


                            Less Than Kin



                                  By



                          Alice Duer Miller



                             New York

                         Henry Holt and Company

                                 1909

                            COPYRIGHT, 1909

                                   BY

                         HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY



                         Published May, 1909

                      QUINN & BODEN COMPANY PRESS

                             RAHWAY, N. J.

                             LESS THAN KIN

                               Chapter I

The curtain rolled down, the horns gave forth a final blare, and the
whole house rustled with returning self-consciousness. Mrs. Raikes and
Miss Lewis had always had orchestra seats for Monday nights. Their
well-brushed heads, their high jeweled collars, their little bare
backs were as familiar to experienced opera-goers as the figure of the
long-suffering doorman. They had the reputation of being musical. What
indeed could prove it better than their preference for orchestra seats,
when they might so easily have gone whenever they wanted in the boxes
of their friends?
As the lights went up, they both turned to the glittering tiers above
them. The opera was a favorite and the house was full, though here
and there an empty box caught one’s eye like a missing tooth. Miss
Lewis was sweeping the semicircle like an astronomer in full cry after
a comet. She had begun conscientiously at the stage box, and with
but few comments she had reached the third or fourth, when her hand
was arrested. There were three people in it--an old man in a velvet
skull-cap, tall, thin, wrinkled, and strangely somber against the
red-and-gold background; a younger man dimly seen in the shadow; and a
slim young woman in gray.
The curve of the house afforded examples of every sort and kind of
brilliantly dressed lady. There were dowagers and young girls, there
were women who forgot the public and lounged with an arm over the back
of a little gilt chair, and there were others who sat almost too erect,
presenting their jewels and their composed countenances to the gaze of
whoever cared to admire.
The lady in gray did neither. She sat leaning a little forward, and
looking down absently into the orchestra, so that it was hard to tell
how attentively she was listening to the man behind her. She had an
extremely long waist, and had the effect of being balanced like a
flower on its stalk.
Miss Lewis, with her glass still on the box, exclaimed:
“What, again! Wasn’t he with the Lees last week?”
“You mean James Emmons,” answered Mrs. Raikes. “He is not with Nellie.
He belongs somewhere on the other side of the house. He came into
the box just before the entr’acte. Rather she than me. He has a
singularly heavy hand in social interchange.”