ences of the afternoon, while Esmeralda waited for some further
additions to the tea-table, and Pixie's quick-seeing eyes roamed here
and there gathering impressions to be stored away for later use. She
was too excited, too interested, to talk herself, but her ears were as
quick as her eyes, and so it happened that she caught a fragment of
conversation between Miss Ward and the tall Mr Vaughan, which was
certainly not intended for her ears.

"...A _sister_!" he was repeating in tones of incredulous astonishment.
"A sister! But how extraordinarily unlike! She must have thrown in her
own beauty to add to Mrs Hilliard's share!"

"Oh, hush!" breathed the girl urgently. "_She heard_!"

Stanor Vaughan lifted his head sharply and met Pixie's watching eyes
fixed upon him. His own glance was tense and shamed, but to his
amazement hers was friendly, humorous, undismayed. There was no
displeasure in her face, no hint of humiliation nor discomfiture--
nothing, it would appear, but serene, unruffled agreement.

Stanor Vaughan had not a good memory: few events of his youth remained
with him after middle life, but when he was an old, old man that moment
still remained vivid, when, in the place of rebuke, he first met the
radiance of Pixie. O'Shaughnessy's broad, sweet smile.

CHAPTER SIX.

A TALK ABOUT MEN--AND PICKLES.

Stanor Vaughan was deputed to take Pixie in to dinner that evening, an
arrangement which at the beginning of the meal appeared less agreeable
to him than to his partner. He cast furtive glances at the small,
plain, yet mysteriously attractive little girl, who was the sister of
the beautiful Mrs Hilliard, the while she ate her soup, and found
himself attacked by an unusual nervousness. He didn't know what to say:
he didn't know how to say it. He had made a bad start, and he wished
with all his heart that he could change places with Carr and "rot" with
that jolly Miss Ward. All the same, he found himself curiously
attracted by this small Miss O'Shaughnessy, and he puzzled his handsome
head to discover why.

There was no beauty in the little face, and, as a rule, Stanor, as he
himself would have expressed it, had "no use" for a girl who was plain.
What really attracted him was the happiness and serenity which shone in
Pixie's face, as light shines through the encircling glass, for to human
creatures as to plants the great necessity of life is sun, and its
attraction is supreme. Walk along a crowd