way--"

Laura Macpherson was on her feet and it was her eyes now that were
holding the woman of the steel hooks.

"Miss Swaim is our guest, the daughter of an old friend of the
Macphersons. Of course we--"

Oh what was the use? Laura's anger fell away. It was too ridiculous to
engage in a quarrel with the town long-tongue. York was right. The only
way to get along with Stellar Bahrr was not to traffic with her. Mrs.
Bahrr rose also, gripping at the chance for escape uninjured.

"I'll see you this afternoon if you still feel like helpin' me, an' York
is willin'. I clear forgot to put out my ice-card. Good day. Good day."

The woman shuffled away, leaving the mistress of "Cluny Castle" in the
grip of many evil spirits. The demon of anger, of doubt, of contempt, of
incipient distrust, of self-accusation for even listening--these and
others contended with the angel of the sense of humor and the natural
courtesy of a well-bred woman.

And then the lost purse came up again.

"I may have left it in Jerry's room when I went to that closet after my
wrap last evening. I'll never learn to keep my clothes out of our
guest-room, I suppose," Laura said to herself, going at once to Jerry's
room.

As she pushed aside some dresses suspended by hoops to a pole in the
closet, Jerry's beaded hand-bag fell from a shelf above the hangings,
and the fastening, loosened by the fall, let the contents roll out and
lay exposed on the floor.

As Laura began to gather them up and put them back in their place, she
saw her own silk purse stuffed tightly into the bottom of her guest's
hand-bag. And then and there the poison tips of Stellar Bahrr's shafts
began a festering sore deep and difficult to reach.

<tb>

It was high noon when York Macpherson and his fair companion returned
from the far side of the big Macpherson ranch. Jerry's hair was blown in
ringlets about her forehead and neck. Her cheeks were blooming and her
eyes were like stars. With the fresh morning breeze across the prairie,
the exhilarating ride on horseback, and the novel interest in a ranch
whose appointments were so unlike "Eden" and the other Winnowoc Valley
farms, Jerry had the ecstasy of a new freedom to quicken her pulse-beat.
She had solved her problem; now she was free for her romantic nature to
expand. It was such a freedom as she had never in her wilful life known
before, because it had a purpose in it such as she had never known
before, a purpose in which th