exclaimed
softly, as Winnie's mildly inquiring face appeared around a narrow
alley between the close-packed flowering plants. "I'm coming
to-morrow, before breakfast--"

Willa shook her head, the light waning in her eyes.

"No, not to-morrow, Kearn. There is something that I must do,
something I cannot put aside even--even for you."

"In the evening, then? I must see you to-morrow sometime! It's going
to be hard enough to live through to-night!"

She nodded, and, not trusting herself to speak again, turned and
slipped away to meet Winnie Mason.

That placidly dense young man was mightily pleased with the effusive
greeting with which she favored him, and had she vision enough to note
it, she might have read in his worshiping eyes a like message to that
which she had just heard.

But she was blind, dazed in the light of her own swiftly gained
wondrous happiness. The music, the dancers, the little crystal-laden
supper-tables, the final romp all passed in a kaleidoscopic dream
before her, and only the wintry night wind beating upon her in a frigid
blast, as she stepped from the awninged passage-way to the limousine,
awakened her to a sense of reality.

Just then, the flash of a street-lamp in at the window fell for a
passing moment on Angie's face as she sat half-turned from her cousin
and Willa caught her breath to stifle a sudden startled exclamation.
She had seen Angie in many fits of temper, sullen and raging, but never
had the girl's expression been so fiendish! The doll-like beauty was
gone in a distortion of anger, but there was a suggestion of malignant
triumph, too, which aroused Willa's apprehension.

She knew that in her heart Angie despised her as an upstart and
bitterly resented her small success in the social world, beside blaming
her for the episode with Starr Wiley. She remembered, too, how Angie
had betrayed her to him. In her maddening anxiety for Tia Juana's
safety, Willa had given no thought to the means Wiley must have used to
reinstate himself once more in her cousin's willing eyes.

Was this evidence of fury directed against her because she had been the
unwitting cause of Kearn Thode's defection in the matter of the two
dances, or was something deeper and more significant in the wind?

Willa was not left in doubt for long. She had scarcely finished her
preparations for the night and was braiding her long black hair into a
massive rope, when a light, brittle tapping came upon her