tches.

They were heads, most of them, impressionistic studies in pencil or
pastel, with now and then a pen-and-ink bearing evidence of more
painstaking after-work. They were made on bits of map paper, the backs
of old letters, and not a few on leaves torn from an engineer's
note-book.

"They don't count for much in an artistic way," said Adams, with the
brutal frankness of a friendly critic, "but they will serve to show
you that I wasn't all kinds of an embroiderer when I was telling you
about Winton's proclivities the other day."

"I shouldn't apologize for that, if I were you," she retorted. "It is
well past apology, don't you think?" And then: "What is this one?"

They had come to the last of the sketches, which was a rude map. It
was penciled on the leaf of a memorandum, and Adams recognized it as
the outline Winton had made and used in explaining the right-of-way
entanglement.

"It is a map," he said; "one that Jack drew day before yesterday when
he was trying to make me understand the situation up here. I wonder
why he kept it? Is there anything on the other side?"

She turned the leaf, and they both went speechless for the moment. The
reverse of the scrap of cross-ruled paper held a very fair likeness of
a face which Virginia's mirror had oftenest portrayed: a sketch
setting forth in a few vigorous strokes of the pencil the
impressionist's ideal of the "goddess fresh from the bath."

"By Jove!" exclaimed Adams, when he could find the word for his
surprise. Then he tried to turn it off lightly. "There is a good bit
more of the artist in Jack than I have been giving him credit for.
Don't you know, he must have got the notion for that between two
half-seconds--when you recognized me on the platform at Kansas City.
It's wonderful!"

"So very wonderful that I think I shall keep it," she rejoined, not
without a touch of austerity. Then she added: "Mr. Winton will
probably never miss it. If he does, you will have to explain the best
way you can." And Adams could only say "By Jove!" again, and busy
himself with pouring the tea which Ah Foo had brought in.

In the nature of things the tea-drinking in the stuffy "dinkey"
drawing-room was not prolonged. Time was flying. Virginia's errand of
mercy was not yet accomplished, and Aunt Martha in her character of
anxious chaperon was not to be forgotten. Also, Miss Carteret had a
feeling that under his well-bred exterior Mr. Morton P. Adams was
chafing like any barba