arian!" Hamlen cried at length, in a voice so full of suffering
that it staggered her; "the world is not to be trusted even when you
hold it up so temptingly before me. It always has been false and always
will be so for me. Each time I have given it the chance it has struck me
a harder blow than before. No, Marian, I can't expose myself again. If I
could make myself a part of some one else--if this boy-- No, no! I
couldn't take the risk. You mustn't ask me. You mean it kindly, but--"

"Trust me," Marian said softly. "Come," she continued, nodding in the
direction of the returning party. "I will tell Harry that you are dining
with us to-night at the 'Princess.'"

* * * * *

IV

* * * * *

It was in the long, spacious dining-room of the "Princess" that Cosden
pointed out the Thatcher party to Huntington, and Hamlen was with them.
Naturally enough Huntington's eyes first rested on the girl's face, and
in it he found enough that was reminiscent to cause a start. It was
Marian Seymour as she must have looked when he knew her, but not at all
as he had come to think of her during the intervening years. How
ridiculously young she was! But Huntington had discovered that young
people were getting to look younger every year now. It almost annoyed
him, whenever he went to Cambridge to straighten out some mix-up of
nephew Billy's, to see how much smaller and younger the students were
to-day than when he was there. He remembered distinctly that he and his
mates had been men when he was in college; but the present generation
was made up of youngsters who should not be allowed abroad without their
nurses.

Miss Thatcher, whom Cosden pointed out to him, came within the same
category. She carried herself with a dignity not always seen in girls of
her age, but she was undeniably young. Then his glance passed from her
to the older woman whom he took to be her mother, and he found himself
guilty of staring shamelessly. This was undoubtedly the Marian Seymour
of sainted memory, now delightfully matured into an extremely attractive
matron of thirty-eight or forty. The slight figure had changed but
little from what he remembered; the face still showed traces of its
former mischievous vivacity, even though it had become more decorous.
Such changes as he saw were only those which come in the natural
development of a charming girl into a well set-up woman of the world. So