elp. I wouldn't think about him
at all, dear, if you can avoid it. And for yourself, remember always
that you have another protector."

The faintest of smiles parted her lips. In the moonlight, which was
already stealing into the room through the bare, uncurtained window,
her face seemed like a piece of beautiful marble statuary, ghostly,
yet in a single moment exquisitely human.

"I have no claim upon you, Arnold," she reminded him, "and I think
that soon you will pass out of my life. It is only natural. You must
go on, I must remain. And that is the end of it," she added, with a
little quiver of the lips. "Now let us finish talking about
ourselves. I want to talk about your new friends."

"Tell me what you really think of them?" he begged. "Count Sabatini
has been so kind to me that if I try to think about him at all I am
already prejudiced."

"I think," she replied slowly, "that Count Sabatini is the strangest
man whom I ever met. Do you remember when he stood and looked down
upon us? I felt--but it was so foolish!"

"You felt what?" he persisted.

She shook her head.

"I cannot tell. As though we were not strangers at all. I suppose it
is what they call mesmerism. He had that soft, delightful way of
speaking, and gentle mannerism. There was nothing abrupt or new
about him. He seemed, somehow, to become part of the life of any one
in whom he chose to interest himself in the slightest. And he talked
so delightfully, Arnold. I cannot tell you how kind he was to me."

Arnold laughed.

"It's a clear case of hero worship," he declared. "You're going to
be as bad as I have been."

"And yet," she said slowly, "it is his sister of whom I think all
the time. Fenella she calls herself, doesn't she?"

"You like her, too?" Arnold asked eagerly.

"I hate her," was the low, fierce reply.

Arnold drew a little away.

"You can't mean it!" he exclaimed. "You can't really mean that you
don't like her!"

Ruth clutched at his arm as though jealous of his instinctive
disappointment.

"I know that it's brutally ungracious," she declared. "It's a sort
of madness, even. But I hate her because she is the most beautiful
thing I have ever seen here in life. I hate her for that, and I hate
her for her strength. Did you see her come across the lawn to us
to-night, Arnold?"

He nodded enthusiastically.

"You mean in that smoke-colored muslin dress?"

"She has no right to wear clothes like that!" Ruth cried. "She does
i