ot maintain a serious interest in that which one treated as a
jest--held up to ridicule. She would play with him like an expert angler
plays with a fish, and when landed, would walk over him
rough-shod--trample him back into the dust of that coarser clay from
which he sprang.

Ah, yes, the country was not so dull after all! It would be a royal
lark; a holiday long to be remembered. They were so far from the great
world that, when it was all over, not even the slightest rumor or
breath of scandal would remain to remind her of the flirtation upon
which she had decided to embark.

With these thoughts running through her mind, the fascinating,
violet-eyed daughter of Colonel Van Ashton lightly dipped the tips of
her dainty fingers into a rouge-pot, glanced into the mirror and drew
them across her lips, and then deliberately attired herself in one of
her smartest gowns preparatory to flinging the first bones of
condescension to the rustic Yankton; the preliminaries of a series of
expectations and hopes deferred that were intended to reduce him to a
state of submission suitable to receive the final kick which was to
leave Mr. Yankton a wiser but a sadder man.

XVIII

Blanch stood before a long mirror that adorned one of the walls of her
room, trying the effect of a new tea-gown.

The mirror was an ancient piece of furniture consisting of a faded gilt
frame and six separate rows of large, unevenly fitting squares of glass;
the style that was in vogue two centuries ago. As she regarded herself
in it, she saw herself reflected in sections, probably with much the
same effect as Marie Antoinette saw her reflection at Versailles.

"Coronada must have brought this mirror with him on his first
expedition," she remarked to Bessie who lounged on the sofa on the
opposite side of the room amid a heap of florid cushions. "I feel as
though I had a personal grudge against that man," she continued, vainly
endeavoring to catch an unbroken outline of herself in the glass.

"It's stunning, Blanch!" broke in Bessie from the sofa. "What is it--a
Worth?"

"No--a Doucet. Isn't it absurd that I should array myself in these
gorgeous gowns to compete with that Indian in her few flimsy calicoes
and silks? The contrast is out of all proportion. It's the sublime and
the ridiculous. And yet she looks well in anything! Dress her in rags
and she is picturesque; robe her in silks and she is fascinating."

"That's just what I can't understa