him, and he had paused in his other pursuit to captivate her,
as he might have stepped aside to pluck a flower beside the way. To his
astonishment, she declined the honor; more, she laughed at him. It
teased him to find himself balked by a mere country girl, and from this
moment he looked on her with new eyes. The unexpected revelation of a
deeper nature than most he had known astonished him. Since their
interview on the street Lois received him with more friendliness than
she had hitherto shown him. In fact, the house was a sad one these days,
and any diversion was welcome. The discontinuance of Keith's visits had
been so sudden that Lois had felt it all the more. She had no idea of
the reason, and set it down to the score of his rumored success with
Mrs. Lancaster. She, too, could play the game of pique, and she did it
well. She accordingly showed Wickersham more favor than she had ever
shown him before. While, therefore, he kept up his visits to Mrs.
Norman, he was playing all the time his other game with her cousin,
knowing the world well enough to be sure that it would not believe his
attentions to the latter had any serious object. In this he was not
mistaken. The buzz that coupled his name with Mrs. Wentworth's was soon
as loud as ever.

Finally Lois decided to take matters in her own hands. She would appeal
to Mr. Wickersham himself. He had talked to her of late in a manner
quite different from the sneering cynicism which he aired when she first
met him. In fact, no one could hold higher sentiments than he had
expressed about women or about life. Mr. Keith himself had never held
loftier ideals than Mr. Wickersham had declared to her. She began to
think that the tittle-tattle that she got bits of whenever she saw Mrs.
Nailor or some others was, perhaps, after all, slander, and that Mr.
Wickersham was not aware of the injury he was doing Mrs. Wentworth. She
would appeal to his better nature. She lay in wait several times without
being able to meet him in a way that would not attract attention. At
length she wrote him a note, asking him to meet her on the street, as
she wished to speak to him privately.

When Wickersham met her that afternoon at the point she had designated,
not far from the Park, he had a curious expression on his cold face.

She was dressed in a perfectly simple, dark street costume which fitted
without a wrinkle her willowy figure, and a big black hat with a single
large feather shaded her fa