rst feeling was one of stunned
amazement, and an almost incredulous resentment. He had gone to and
fro in the earth and walked up and down in it, comfortably immune,
an amused and ironic looker-on. And now, at thirty, without rhyme or
reason he had fallen in love with a red-haired young woman of whom
he knew absolutely nothing, beyond the bare fact that she was Jason
Vandervelde's ward. A woman who didn't conform to any standard he
had ever set for himself, whose mind was a closed book to him, of
whose very existence he had been ignorant until to-night. Old Dame
Destiny must have sniggered when she thrust Mrs. Peter Champneys,
nee Nancy Simms, into the exquisitely ordered life of Mr. Berkeley
Hayden!

He presently discovered from Jason all that the trustee of the
Champneys estate knew of Mrs. Peter, which really wasn't very much,
as the lawyer and his wife had never seen Nancy until the morning of
her marriage. And he didn't have much to say about her as she was
then. Hayden gathered that it was a marriage of convenience, for
family reasons--to keep the money in the family. He asked a few
questions about Peter, whom Vandervelde thought a likely young
fellow enough, but whom Hayden fancied must be a poor sort--probably
a freak with a pseudo-artistic temperament. There couldn't have been
very much love lost between a husband and wife who had consented to
so singular a separation. Hayden had a _very_ poor opinion of Mr.
Peter Champneys! But he was fiercely glad it hadn't been a
love-match, glad that that other man's claim upon Anne was at the
best nominal, that theirs was a marriage in name only.

He saw her several times before her departure, and came no nearer to
understanding her. The night before they sailed, he gave a dinner in
his apartment, an old aunt of his, more enchanting at sixty than at
sixteen, being the only other guest. That apartment with its
brocaded walls and its marvelous furniture was a revelation to
Nancy. It was like an opened door to her.

She looked at her host with a new interest. He appeared to greater
advantage seen, as it were, against his proper and natural
background. And that background had the glamour of things strange,
exciting, and alluring, smacking somewhat of, say, an Arabian
Night's entertainment. Over the dining-room mantel hung a curious
and colorful landscape, in which two brown girls, naked to the waist
and from thence to the knees wrapped in straight, bright-colored
stuff, r