The Sisters-In-Law

The Sisters-In-Law, by Gertrude
Atherton

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Title: The Sisters-In-Law
Author: Gertrude Atherton

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THE SISTERS-IN-LAW
A NOVEL OF OUR TIME
BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON

TO DR. ALANSON WEEKS OF SAN FRANCISCO

Several people who enter casually into this novel are leading characters
in other novels and stories of the "California Series," which covers the
social history of the state from the beginning of the last century. They
are Gwynne, his mother, Lady Victoria Gwynne, Isabel Otis and the
Hofers in ANCESTORS; the Randolphs in A DAUGHTER OF THE
VINE; Lee Tarlton, Lady Barnstable, Lady Arrowmount, Coralie Geary,
the Montgomerys and Trennahans in TRANSPLANTED and THE
CALIFORNIANS; Rezánov in the novel of that name, and Chonita
Iturbi y Moncada in THE DOOMSWOMAN, both bound in the
volume, BEFORE THE GRINGO CAME; The Price Ruylers in THE

AVALANCHE.

BOOK I
CHAPTER I

I
The long street rising and falling and rising again until its farthest crest
high in the east seemed to brush the fading stars, was deserted even by
the private watchmen that guarded the homes of the apprehensive in the
Western Addition. Alexina darted across and into the shadows of the
avenue that led up to her old-fashioned home, a relic of San Francisco's
"early days," perched high on the steepest of the casual hills in that city
of a hundred hills.
She was breathless and rather frightened, for although of an
adventurous spirit, which had led her to slide down the pillars of the
verandah at night when her legs were longer than her years, and during
the past winter to make a hardly less dignified exit by a side door when
her worthy but hopelessly Victorian mother was asleep, this was the
first time that she had been out after midnight.
And it was five o'clock in the morning!
She had gone with Aileen Lawton, her mother's pet aversion, to a party
given by one of those new people whom Mrs. Groome, a massive if
crumbling pillar of San Francisco's proud old aristocracy, held in pious
disdain, and had danced in the magnificent ballroom with the tireless
exhilaration of her eighteen years until the weary band had played
Home Sweet Home.
She had never imagined that any entertainment could be so brilliant,
even among the despised nouveaux riches, nor that there were so many
flowers even in California. Her own coming-out party in the dark

double parlors of the old house among the eucalyptus trees, whose
moans and sighs could be heard above the thin music of piano and
violin, had been so formal and dull that she had cried herself to sleep
after the last depressed member of the old set had left on the stroke of
midnight. Even Aileen's high mocking spirits had failed her, and she
had barely been able to summon them for a moment as she kissed the
friend, to whom she was sincerely devoted, a sympathetic good-night.
"Never mind, old girl. Nothing can ever be worse. Not even your own
funeral. That's one comfort."

II
That had been last November. During the ensuing five months Alexina
had been taken by her mother to such entertainments as were given by
other members of that distinguished old band, whose glory, like Mrs.
Groome's own, had reached its meridian in the last of the eighties.
Not that any one else in San Francisco was quite as exclusive as Mrs.
Groome. Others might be as faithful in their way to the old tradition, be
as proud of their inviolate