ming up here, and she hasn't now--or even any clothes
but summer things, and a blue sweater she wears all the time. She never
speaks about herself, or where she comes from----"

"I don't see why there should be any mystery about that!" It was a lie,
but I might not have seen, if she had not spoken to me incomprehensibly
in the dark. "Dudley probably knows all about her people."

"A girl called Paulette Brown doesn't have any people," scornfully.
"Besides, her name isn't Brown, or Paulette--she used to forget to
answer to either of them at first; and if Dudley knows what it really
is, I'm going to know too--before I'm a month older! I tell you I've
seen her before, and I know there was some kind of an ugly story tacked
on to her and her dancing. That, and her real name, are up in the attic
of my brain somewhere, and some day they'll come down!"

"Well, they won't concern me," I cut in stolidly. Whoever Paulette Brown
was, if she were going to marry Dudley Wilbraham ten times over, she was
the one girl in the world who belonged to me,--and I was not going to
have her discussed by Marcia behind a shut door.

But Marcia's retort was too quick for me. "They may interest you, all
the same, if that girl's what I think she is! Don't make any mistake,
Nicky; she's no chorus girl out of work. She's a lady. Only--she's been
something else, too! You watch how she uses a perfectly trained body."

I all but started. I had seen it already, when I thought she moved like
Pavlova. "Anything else?" I inquired disagreeably.

"Yes," said Marcia quietly. "She's afraid for her life, or Dudley's--I
can't make out which. Wait, and you'll see. Come on; we'll be late for
supper. It would have been over hours ago if Dudley and I hadn't been
out shooting this afternoon. We've only just come in."

But I was not thinking about supper. The Wilbrahams had been out, and
Paulette Brown, left alone, had taken her chance to speak to some one.
That she had happened to mistake her man and spoken to me made no
difference in the fact, and it came too aptly on Marcia's suspicions
about her. But "My good heavens, I won't care what she did," I thought
fiercely. My dream girl's eyes were honest, if they were deep blue lakes
a man might drown his soul in, too. If she were Dudley's twice over I
was going to stand by her, because by all my dreams of her she was more
mine. "I haven't time, or chances, to be watching pretty ladies," I said
drily, "and I wouldn't