ask Eleanor over the telephone.

"I'm sorry," answered Eleanor, "but I had to decline."

"Oh, duck your engagement if you have any!" he said, pleading like a
boy. "It'll do you good to jolly up!" But she was firm. He matched the
cool tone of Kate with the equally cool tone of Eleanor, and wondered,
as he hung up the telephone, whether anything had gone wrong between
those girls. He remembered now that he had not seen Kate at the
Tiffany's since the expedition into Chinatown. Had he but known it,
he was perceiving late a thing of which others were making gossip
already.

While Bertram freshened up his toilet in his room and thought hard on
this, Kate Waddington, at home in the Mission, was making certain
special preparations of her own. Mrs. Waddington could measure the
importance of her daughter's engagements by the care she took with her
toilet. Fresh lace indicated the first degree of importance, her
latest pair of shoes the second degree, and perfectly fresh white
gloves raised the engagement to the highest degree of all. To-night,
all these omens served.

Further, Mrs. Waddington saw that Kate was rummaging through the
unanswered letters in her writing desk, saw that she was comparing two
of them. Kate picked up the larger one. She was wearing furs, since
the April night was chilly. This letter she tucked carefully into her
muff.

"Why in the name of common sense are you taking that letter along to a
dinner party?"

"Oh, something I want to show someone," answered Kate after a
momentary pause. Mrs. Waddington knew from old times the hidden
meaning of that pause. Just so, when at the age of seven they had
caught her in the sugar-bowl, Kate had paused before starting her
ready explanation. She had never overcome it; and her mother was the
last person likely to acquaint her with that flaw of method.

"It's from Alice Johnstone, I judge by the handwriting," continued
Mrs. Waddington.

"Oh, I guess so," responded Kate. She made rapidly for the door. "Good
night, mother. I'll be home to-night, but rather late."

"Thank you for small favors--" but Kate was gone.

Sanguinetti's held a place in the old city no less definite than that
of Zinkand's or the Poodle Dog. In the beginning a plain Italian
restaurant, frequented by the Italian fishermen whose sashes made so
bright the water front and whose lateen sails, shaped by the swelling
wind like a horse's ear, gave delight to the bay, it had existed since
the Nea