ination--are driven
to flight. But with a woman, whole regiments of cunning, whole
battalions of craft, with all the well-trained scouts of intuition
and all the dashing cavalries of charm, are needed to rout her
absolutely from the field.

Within an hour Mrs. Durlacher descended to the dining-room. The gown
she wore would not have pleased a man to infatuation; but a woman
would have realized its beauty, known its value. With deft fingers,
she arranged the flowers. In a chair by the fire, hiding herself from
view to any one outside the window, she sat and watched the table
being laid, giving orders how the vases were to be placed on the old
oak table.

"Lay two places--that's all," she said.

Taylor looked up. "I thought you said there would be a lady with Mr.
Traill, madam."

"I said--probably. You can lay another place if she comes." A vision
crossed her mind of making so small a point as that, a moment of
embarrassment for her unwelcome guest.

Then a sound reached her ears. Her eyes were arrested, fixed
unseeingly to a point before her as she listened.

"Is that a motor, Taylor?"

Taylor looked out of the window. "It's a taxi-cab, madam."

"Can you see who's inside?"

"I suppose it's Mr. Traill, madam. Yes--it is."

"Any one with him?"

"Yes, madam--a lady."

CHAPTER II

Circumstances will almost make a character in a day; in three years,
a character can be moulded, bent, twisted or straightened, in the
furnace of events; just as the potter, idling with the passive clay,
will shape it, heedlessly almost, as the fancy nerves his fingers.
But before he is aware, the time slips by, the clay gets set and there,
in front of his eyes, is the figure as his fancy made it--brittle,
easily broken into dust, but impossible of being moulded afresh until
it shall again go back into the water of oblivion and become the
shapeless mass that once it was.

So, in the three years that had passed since she had yielded body
and soul into the keeping of Jack Traill, had Sally's character
become set in the moulding of his influence. Happiness she had--that
to the full. He cared for her the more when once he had her gentle
nature under his touch; showed her all those little attentions of
which such a mind as his is capable of conceiving--teased her, petted
her, laughed like a schoolboy at her feminine whims and fancies.

For the first month of their relationship, they went abroad. He gave
her money, more money