ssion of it. It was of a delicately haggard child with a
marvelously agreeable smile, a fine, high-poised head upon a thin neck,
and an air of bored superiority. Combined with this was a touch of
weariness about the eyelids which drooped in a lofty way. Cowperwood
was fascinated. Because of the daughter he professed an interest in
the mother, which he really did not feel.

A little later Cowperwood was moved to definite action by the discovery
in a photographer's window in Louisville of a second picture of
Berenice--a rather large affair which Mrs. Carter had had enlarged from
a print sent her by her daughter some time before. Berenice was
standing rather indifferently posed at the corner of a colonial mantel,
a soft straw outing-hat held negligently in one hand, one hip sunk
lower than the other, a faint, elusive smile playing dimly around her
mouth. The smile was really not a smile, but only the wraith of one,
and the eyes were wide, disingenuous, mock-simple. The picture because
of its simplicity, appealed to him. He did not know that Mrs. Carter
had never sanctioned its display. "A personage," was Cowperwood's
comment to himself, and he walked into the photographer's office to see
what could be done about its removal and the destruction of the plates.
A half-hundred dollars, he found, would arrange it all--plates, prints,
everything. Since by this ruse he secured a picture for himself, he
promptly had it framed and hung in his Chicago rooms, where sometimes
of an afternoon when he was hurrying to change his clothes he stopped
to look at it. With each succeeding examination his admiration and
curiosity grew. Here was perhaps, he thought, the true society woman,
the high-born lady, the realization of that ideal which Mrs. Merrill
and many another grande dame had suggested.

It was not so long after this again that, chancing to be in Louisville,
he discovered Mrs. Carter in a very troubled social condition. Her
affairs had received a severe setback. A certain Major Hagenback, a
citizen of considerable prominence, had died in her home under peculiar
circumstances. He was a man of wealth, married, and nominally living
with his wife in Lexington. As a matter of fact, he spent very little
time there, and at the time of his death of heart failure was leading a
pleasurable existence with a Miss Trent, an actress, whom he had
introduced to Mrs. Carter as his friend. The police, through a
talkative deputy coron