ore he left he saw Pauline and Gladys
sitting apart and joined them.

"Why not invite Scarborough to spend a week up here?" he asked, just
glancing at his wife. He never ventured to look at her when there was
any danger of their eyes meeting.

Her lips tightened and the color swiftly left her cheeks and swiftly
returned.

"Wouldn't you like it, Gladys?" he went on.

"Oh, DO ask him, Pauline," said Gladys, with enthusiasm. Like her
brother, she always went straight to the point--she was in the habit of
deciding for herself, of thinking what she did was above criticism, and
of not especially caring if it was criticised. "Please do!"

Pauline waited long--it seemed to her long enough for time to wrinkle
her heart--before answering: "We'll need another man. I'll ask him--if
you wish."

Gladys pressed her hand gratefully--she was fond of Pauline, and
Pauline was liking her again as she had when they were children and
playmates and partners in the woes of John Dumont's raids upon their
games. Just then Langdon's sister, Mrs. Barrow, called Gladys to the
other end of the drawing-room. Dumont's glance followed her.

"I think it'd be a good match," he said reflectively.

Pauline's heart missed a beat and a suffocating choke contracted her
throat.

"What?" she succeeded in saying.

"Gladys and Scarborough," replied Dumont. "She ought to marry--she's
got no place to go. And it'd be good business for her--and for him,
too, for that matter, if she could land him. Don't you think she's
attractive to men?"

"Very," said Pauline, lifelessly.

"Don't you think it would be a good match?" he went on.

"Very," she said, looking round wildly, as her breath came more and
more quickly.

Langdon strolled up.

"Am I interrupting a family council?" he asked.

"Oh, no," Dumont replied, rising. "Take my chair." And he was gone.

"This room is too warm," said Pauline. "No, don't open the window.
Excuse me a moment." She went into the hall, threw a golf cape round
her shoulders and stepped out on the veranda, closing the door-window
behind her. It was a moonless, winter night--stars thronging the
blue-black sky; the steady lamp of a planet set in the southern horizon.

When she had been walking there for a quarter of an hour the
door-window opened and Langdon looked out. "Oh--there you are!" he
said.

"Won't you join me?" Her tone assured him that he would not be
intruding. He got a hat and overcoat and they