ere the light shone full on her face, and in
neither mouth nor eyes could they see the trace of shadow. On the
contrary, there was a radiant loveliness about her that astonished those
that loved her best.

Then Mr. Norris was announced.

Now when Miss Elton had her first peep into her soul, and so stirred up
the possibilities in her nature, she also awoke to new insight into what
was going on behind other people's eyes. The day when she could look a
young man squarely in the face and say to him whatever she thought had
passed. The period of unconscious girlhood, much prolonged in her case,
came to an end. Since, in this world, shadow goes with sunshine, so
demons tag after angels; and with the dawn of her sweeter womanhood,
Madeline developed a new spirit of contrariety and coquetry that
astonished no one so much as herself.

When Mr. Norris came in, his apologetic glance told her at once that she
had hardly spoken to him since she had turned up her straight little
high-bred nose and informed him and Dick that she despised their
underhand ways; told her, also, what had not dawned on her before, that
here was an abject creature, and that it was the province of womanhood
to batter and buffet him who is down, perhaps in secret fear of that day
when outraged manhood will rise and claim a tyranny of its own.

So she put out her hand with that stiffness that holds at arm's length
and said:

"Oh, how dy' do, Mr. Norris," just as though they had never sailed
together in dual solitude, and she allowed her lip to curl in evidence
of her disapproval of the much warmer greeting of her elders.

She sat down and eyed and tapped a small bronze slipper, while she
ignored the reproachful glances of her mother at her rank desertion of
conversational duties. Her father hardly noticed it. He himself so liked
young men that he frequently forgot that his daughter and not himself
might be the object of their quest. So he plunged cheerfully into an
animated discussion of the new tide in civic politics, while Norris
dully and conscientiously tried to bear up his end.

Ellery's eyes, however, as well as the thoughts behind those superficial
thoughts that guided his words, were absorbed in the other side of the
room, where Miss Elton canvassed with her mother the merits of various
embroidery silks. She was lovelier than ever. He had thought her perfect
before, but to-night she had added a sheen to perfection and made herself
entrancing, b