nk you, no." He bowed over her hand. "To tell you the truth, I am
rather fagged out from my trip, and I am anxious to get on up-town.
Please, tell Ripley that I will see him to-morrow, and transfer the
necessary papers to him.--Au revoir, my dear. Try to remember what I
have told you."

Willa stared with dazed eyes about the pretty room to which she was
ushered. The furniture was of ivory and dull gold, the walls,
draperies and floor a soft French blue, and delicate rose-shaded lights
glowed delicately in many brackets.

The drawing-room she had taken as a matter of course; it impressed her
as being not unlike that of the big hotel at Tampico, but to be
expected to live and move around and sleep in this fragile, stifling,
cluttered doll's house of a room was unthinkable. It was hers, the
maid had said so; therefore, she would make the best of it, in her own
fashion.

A half-hour later the house-maid presented herself at Mrs. Halstead's
door in a state bordering on hysteria.

"If you please, Madame, the young lady, Miss Murdaugh, has taken her
room all to pieces. The draperies' are down from the windows and piled
in a corner with the cushions from the chaise longue, and the bed is
moved over to the windows and stripped down to the blanket. All the
rose shades are off the lights and the furniture is pushed back against
the wall. Miss Murdaugh rang for me just now to take all the drapery
and things out of the room, and I thought I had better come to you."

Mrs. Halstead stepped forward, but stopped with a slight compression of
her lips.

"Very well, Katie. You may remove them, for the time being. I will
see Miss Murdaugh about it later."

When the housemaid had withdrawn, her mistress dropped rather than
seated herself in the nearest chair. The mechanical smile had vanished
and her eyes narrowed. She foresaw friction ahead.

Willa, serenely unconscious that she had offended, slipped into the one
thin black gown which she possessed, a mail-order purchase which had
given her immense satisfaction, but when dinner was announced and she
descended the stairs, she paused aghast at the splendor before her.

A girl stood in the drawing-room door in a marvelous creation which
seemed made of diamond-tipped, rainbow-tinted mist. From it her
youthful shoulders and slim neck rose creamily, surmounted by a small
head banded boyishly with golden hair. Her wide eyes were china blue,
her nose piquantly retrousse and