f two she had come to visit.

Elinor's loving impatience had taken her to the library windows more
than once to watch for their coming. It seemed so long that Ross had
been gone. When the automobile was heard to stop, she rushed to the
front door to open it herself, flinging it wide as a hospitable
indication of how glad she was to welcome Arethusa. But with her hand
still on the door knob, she paused and drew back. This tall, slim
child, every bit as tall as she was herself, with her ardent grey eyes,
and that mass of tumbled red hair down her back, for Arethusa's various
exciting experiences had been hard for the coiffure with which she had
started from home, was not the girl Elinor had led herself to expect as
Ross's daughter. Arethusa, furthermore, was bareheaded, having
forgotten all about her hat and left it in the machine. This, as well
as the quaint costume of Miss Letitia's designing, added to Elinor's
little feeling of surprise.

And Arethusa stopped short also, just inside the door, and shyness
descended upon her once more with this, her first glimpse of the "new
wife."

But whatever Elinor's expression might be said to resemble, Arethusa's
in return after that first look was one of absolute and unalloyed
admiration. In her wildest flights of anticipatory imaginings as to the
appearance of her father's wife, founded on that Letter of his that had
so positively indicated her beauty, Arethusa had never been able to
paint such a picture as she actually saw. For Elinor's young brown
eyes, under her white hair, the lovely glow of her skin, and her
slender gracefulness clothed in that clinging, fascinatingly
smoky-colored gown she wore (a color she much affected), seemed to the
beauty worshipper who regarded her to make her the most Altogether
Beautiful Human Being that she, Arethusa, had ever gazed upon.

"Well," remarked Ross; he thought the funny little silence had lasted
quite long enough, "I hope you two will know each other the next time
you happen to meet anywhere!"

Then was Elinor given one of those same disarming smiles with which
Arethusa had won her father in the automobile, and anything else but
immediate and complete friendship was impossible after such a Smile,
however unlike the girl expected the one who had come might be.

Clay had brought in the forgotten hat when he came with the satchel,
and he hovered about in the background of the hall until he could
communicate to Ross that Miss Arethu