shed Dick
with "Run away for a while, Dick, and give us two women a chance to get
acquainted." She had caught Maggie's embarrassment, and led her to
a corner of the veranda which looked down upon the gardens and the
glistering Sound. She spoke of the impersonal beauties spread before
their vision, until she judged that Maggie's first flutter had abated;
then she led the way to wicker chairs beside a table where obviously tea
was to be spread.

Miss Sherwood accepted Maggie for exactly what she seemed to be; and
presently she was saying in a low voice, with her smiling, unoffending
directness:

"Excuse the liberty of an older woman, Miss Cameron--but I don't wonder
that Dick likes you. You see, he's told me."

If Maggie had been at loss for her cue before, she had it now. It was
unpretentiousness.

"But, Miss Sherwood--I'm so crude," she faltered, acting her best. "Out
West I never had any chances to learn. Not any chances like your Eastern
girls."

"That's no difference, my dear. You are a nice, simple girl--that's what
counts!"

"Thank you," said Maggie.

"So few of our rich girls of the East know what it is to be simple,"
continued Miss Sherwood. "Too many are all affectation, and pose, and
forwardness. At twenty they know all there is to be known, they are
blasees--cynical--ready for divorce before they are ready for marriage.
By contrast you are so wholesome, so refreshing."

"Thank you," Maggie again murmured.

And as the two women sat there, sprung from the extremes of life, but
for the moment on the level of equals, and as the older talked on, there
grew up in Maggie two violently contradictory emotions. One was triumph.
She had won out here, just as she had said she would win out; and won
out with what Barney had declared to be the most difficult person to get
the better of, a finished woman of the world. Indeed, that was triumph!

The other emotion she did not understand so well. And just then
she could not analyze it. It was an unexpected dismay--a vague but
permeating sickness--a dazed sense that she was being carried by
unfamiliar forces toward she knew not what.

She held fast to her sense of triumph. That was the more apprehendable
and positive; triumph was what she had set forth to win. This sense of
triumph was at its highest, and she was resting in its elating security,
when a car stopped before the house and a large man got out and started
up the steps. From the first moment there was so