t and beauty who were just beginning to
hold their court. For Francis was a great favourite both with men and
women. He was a handsome man, tall, slender, and graceful. He had the
face and brow of a poet, a pallid face framed in a mass of dark hair.
There was a touch of weakness in his mouth, but this was shaded and half
hidden by a full mustache that made much forgivable to beauty-loving
eyes.

It was generally conceded that Mrs. Oakley was a hostess whose guests
had no awkward half-hour before dinner. No praise could be higher than
this, and to-night she had no need to exert herself to maintain this
reputation. Her brother-in-law was the life of the assembly; he had wit
and daring, and about him there was just that hint of charming danger
that made him irresistible to women. The guests heard the dinner
announced with surprise,--an unusual thing, except in this house.

Both Maurice Oakley and his wife looked fondly at the artist as he went
in with Claire Lessing. He was talking animatedly to the girl, having
changed the general trend of the conversation to a manner and tone
directed more particularly to her. While she listened to him, her face
glowed and her eyes shone with a light that every man could not bring
into them.

As Maurice and his wife followed him with their gaze, the same thought
was in their minds, and it had not just come to them, Why could not
Francis marry Claire Lessing and settle in America, instead of going
back ever and again to that life in the Latin Quarter? They did not
believe that it was a bad life or a dissipated one, but from the little
that they had seen of it when they were in Paris, it was at least a bit
too free and unconventional for their traditions. There were, too,
temptations which must assail any man of Francis's looks and talents.
They had perfect faith in the strength of his manhood, of course; but
could they have had their way, it would have been their will to hedge
him about so that no breath of evil invitation could have come nigh to
him.

But this younger brother, this half ward of theirs, was an unruly
member. He talked and laughed, rode and walked, with Claire Lessing with
the same free abandon, the same show of uninterested good comradeship,
that he had used towards her when they were boy and girl together. There
was not a shade more of warmth or self-consciousness in his manner
towards her than there had been fifteen years before. In fact, there was
less, for there