'd wait in the parlor 'm," said the bellboy, and
vanished. Nita glanced at the card and instant trouble stood in her
paling face. Silently Mrs. Garrison held out her hand, took the card, and
one quick look. The buttonhook dropped from her relaxed fingers. The card
read:

"Mr. Gouverneur Prime."

For a second or two the sisters gazed at each other in silence.

At last the elder spoke: "In heaven's name, what brings that absurd boy
back here? I thought him safe in Europe."

CHAPTER IX.

One of the most charming writers of our day and generation has declared
that "the truest blessing a girl can have" is "the ingenuous devotion of
a young boy's heart." Nine mothers in ten will probably take issue with
the gifted author on that point, and though no longer a young girl in
years whatever she might be in looks, Margaret Garrison would gladly have
sent the waiting gentlemen to the right about, for, though he was only
twenty, "Gov" Prime, as a junior at Columbia, had been ingenuously
devoted to the little lady from the very first evening he saw her. A boy
of frank, impulsive nature was "Gov"--a boy still in spite of the budding
mustache, the twenty summers and the barely passed "exam" that wound up
the junior year and entitled him to sit with the seniors when the great
university opened its doors in October. Studies he hated, but tennis,
polo, cricket, riding and dancing were things he loved and excelled in.
Much of his boyhood had been spent at one of those healthy, hearty
English schools where all that would cultivate physical and mental
manhood was assiduously practiced, and all that would militate against
them was as rigorously "tabooed."

At the coming of his twentieth birthday that summer his father had handed
him his check for five thousand dollars--the paternal expression of
satisfaction that his boy had never smoked pipe, cigar or cigarette--and
the same week "Gov" had carried off the blue ribbon with the racquet, and
the second prize with the single sculls. It was during the "exams," the
first week in June, when dropping in for five o'clock tea on some girls
whom he had known for years, he was presented to this witching little
creature whose name he didn't even catch. "We met her away out at an army
post in Wyoming when papa took us to California last year," was whispered
to him, "and they entertained us so cordially, and of course we said if
ever you come to New York you must be sure to let us know--and s