riage as Keith passed
by. Just as she was about to enter the shop, a well-knit figure with
square shoulders and springy step, swinging down the street, caught her
eye. She glanced that way and gave an exclamation. The door was being
held open for her by a blank-faced automaton in a many-buttoned uniform;
so she passed in, but pausing just inside, she glanced back through the
window. The next instant she left the shop and gazed down the street
again. But Keith had turned a corner, and so Alice Lancaster did not
see him, though she stood on tiptoe to try and distinguish him again in
the crowd.

"Well, I would have sworn that that was Gordon Keith," she said to
herself, as she turned away, "if he had not been so broad-shouldered and
good-looking." And wherever she moved the rest of the day her eyes
wandered up and down the street.

Once, as she was thus engaged, Ferdy Wickersham came up. He was dressed
in the tip of the fashion and looked very handsome.

"Who is the happy man?"

The question was so in keeping with her thought that she blushed
unexpectedly.

"No one."

"Ah, not me, then? But I know it was some one. No woman looks so
expectant and eager for 'no one.'"

"Do you think I am like you, perambulating streets trying to make
conquests?" she said, with a smile.

"You do not have to try," he answered lazily. "You do it simply by being
on the street. I am playing in great luck to-day."

"Have you seen Louise this morning?" she asked.

He looked her full in the face. "I see no one but you when you are
around."

She laughed lightly.

"Ferdy, you will begin to believe that after a while, if you do not stop
saying it so often."

"I shall never stop saying it, because it is true," he replied
imperturbably, turning his dark eyes on her, the lids a little closed.

"You have got so in the habit of saying it that you repeat it like my
parrot that I taught once, when I was younger and vainer, to say,
'Pretty Alice.' He says it all the time."

"Sensible bird," said Mr. Wickersham, calmly. "Come and drive me up to
the Park and let's have a stroll. I know such a beautiful walk. There
are so many people out to-day. I saw the lady of the 'cat-eyes and
cat-claws' go by just now, seeking some one whom she can turn again and
rend." It was the name she had given Mrs. Nailor.

"I do not care who is out. Are you going to the Wentworths' this
evening?" she asked irrelevantly.

"No; I rarely go there. Will you mention