othing to her: "I don't know. It is the first
time I have seen him. He certainly is not handsome."

Helene thrust in the hairpins with impassioned haste and deftness, and
excitedly snatched a lace jacket from a drawer. To the maid's despair
Sylvia refused this adornment, refused the smallest touch of rouge,
refused an ornament in her hair. Helene wrung her hands. "But see,
Mademoiselle is not wise! For what good is it to be so savage! He is
more rich than all! They say he owns all the State of Colorado!"

Sylvia, already in full retreat towards the dining-room, caught this
last geographic extravagance of Gallic fancy, and laughed, and with
this mirth still in her face made her re-entry on the veranda. She had
not been away three minutes from the group there, and she was to the
eye as merely flushed and gay when she came back as when she went
away; but a revolution had taken place. Closely shut in her hand, she
held, held fast, the key Helene had thrust there. Behind her smile,
her clear, bright look of valiant youth, a great many considerations
were being revolved with extreme rapidity by an extremely swift and
active brain.

Swift and active as was the brain, it fairly staggered under the task
of instantly rearranging the world according to the new pattern:
for the first certainty to leap into sight was that the pattern was
utterly changed by the events of the morning. She had left the
house, betrayed, defenseless save for a barren dignity, and she had
re-entered it in triumph, or at least with a valid appearance of
triumph, an appearance which had already tided her over the aching
difficulty of the first meeting with Morrison and might carry her ...
she had no time now to think how far.

Page and Arnold were still invisible when she emerged again on the
veranda, and Mrs. Marshall-Smith pounced on her with the frankest
curiosity. "Sylvia, do tell us--how in the world--"

Sylvia was in the midst of a description of the race to the fire, as
vivid as she could make it, when Arnold sauntered back and after him,
in a moment, Page, astonishingly transformed by clothes. His height
meant distinction now. Sylvia noted again his long, strong hands, his
aquiline, tanned face and clear eyes, his thoughtful, observant eyes.
There was a whimsical quirk of his rather thin but gentle lips which
reminded her of the big bust of Emerson in her father's study. She
liked all this; but her suspiciousness, alert for affront, since the