vinced by
Vandeman's sentimentalities, any more than I was. After the man had
gone, I turned on Worth sharply, with,

"Why the devil did you tell that pink-tea proposition about your
dealings with the Van Ness Avenue bank?"

"Safety valve, I guess. I get up too heavy a load of steam, and it's
easy to blow it off to Vandeman. Told him most of it in the smoker,
coming up. You'll talk about anything in a smoker."

"Oh, will you?" I said in exasperation. "And you'll burn anything, I
suppose, that a match'll set fire to?"

"Go easy, Jerry Boyne." His chin dropped to his chest, he sat glowering
out through the window. "Cleansing fires for that sort of garbage," he
said finally. "I burned them on the day of his funeral."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE TORN PAGE

My coming had thrown dinner late; we were barely through with the meal
and back once more in the living room when the latch of the French
window rattled, the window itself was pushed open, and a high imperious
voice proclaimed,

"The Princess of China, calling on Mr. Worth Gilbert."

There stood Ina Vandeman in the gorgeously embroidered robes of a high
caste Chinese lady, her fair hair covered by a sleek black wig that
struck out something odd, almost ominous, in the coloring of her skin,
the very planes of her features. Outside, along the porch, sounded the
patter of many feet; Skeet wriggled through the narrow frame under her
tall sister's arm, came scooting into the room to turn and gaze back at
her.

"Doesn't she look the vamp?"

"Skeet!" Ina had sailed in by this time, and Ernestine followed more
soberly. "You've been told not to say that."

"I think," the other twin backed her up virtuously, "with poor mother
sick and all, you might respect her wishes. You know what she said about
calling Ina a vamp." And Skeet drawled innocently,

"That it hit too near the truth to be funny--wasn't that it?"

Through the open window had followed a half dozen more of the Blossom
Festival crowd, Barbara and Bronson Vandeman among them. Ina paid no
attention to any one, standing there, her height increased by the long,
straight lines of the costume, her bisque doll features given a strange,
pallid dignity by the raw magnificence of its crusted purple and crimson
and green and gold embroidery and the dead black wig.

"Isn't it an exquisite thing, Worth?" displaying herself before him.
"Bronse has a complete Mandarin costume; we lead the grand march as the
emperor a