his chair, how Kate hesitated in the middle of a
sentence, as though confused.

The rehearsed flirtation between Kate and Judge Tiffany faded into a
game of jackstones on the floor.

Mrs. Tiffany heard the double footsteps fade down the hall, heard the
garden door open and close. After a short interval, she heard the door
again, and the dim footsteps sounded for but a moment. They had
turned, evidently, into Eleanor's own living room. Would they stop
there, these two, for a talk--yes, her gentle treble, his booming
bass, drifted down the hall. Presently Mrs. Tiffany heard Eleanor's
laugh, followed by his. In that instant, she looked at the jackstone
players by the hearth. Kate, on the crackle of that laugh, had
arrested all motion. A jack which she had tossed in the air, descended
with no hand to stop it. For a moment, Kate held that intent pose;
then,

"Judge wonderful, I'm a paralytic at times. You for twosies." She
swept the jacks towards him with one of her characteristic gestures,
free and yet deft.

A bell rang in the outer hall, and the maid entered.

"Miss Waddington is wanted at the telephone," she announced.

Eleanor, when she saw that her visitor had no intention of rejoining
the party, commanded him to smoke. He rolled a cigarette, Western
fashion, from powdered tobacco and brown paper, and disposed himself
in the window-seat, one leg drawn up under him, his big shoulders
settled comfortably against the wall. Eleanor began to talk fluently,
superficially, with animation. She felt from the first that he was
throwing himself against her barriers, trying to reach at once the
deeper stages of acquaintance. His direct look seemed both to plead
and to command. She outwitted two or three flanking movements before
he took advantage of a pause and charged her entrenchments direct.

"I've said it before, but I'm going to keep on. You are pretty."

"Thank you," she replied; and smiled--mainly at the ingenuousness of
this, although partly at the contrast between her present view of him
and that old memory.

"Oh, it never seems to bother you when I say that," went on Bert
Chester, bending his rather large and compelling black-brown eyes upon
her. "Some girls would get sore, and some would like it; you never pay
any attention. That's one of the ways you're different."

("Heavens--is he making love already--he is sudden!" thought Eleanor
with amusement.)

"You are, you know. I picked you for different the fi