a tragedy queen,
a Zenobia, a daughter of the gods who would not stoop to conquer. She
looked in vain, however, for the Mrs. Crozier she had imagined made no
appearance from the train. She hastened down the platform still with
keen eyes scanning the passengers, who were mostly alighting to stretch
their legs and get a breath of air.

"She's not here," she said at last darkly to the Young Doctor who had
followed her.

Then suddenly she saw emerge from a little group at the steps of a car
a child in a long dress--so it seemed to her, the being was so small
and delicate--and come forward, having hastily said good-bye to her
fellow-passengers. As the Young Doctor said afterwards, "She wasn't
bigger than a fly," and she certainly was as graceful and pretty and
piquante as a child-woman could be.

Presently, with her alert, rather assertive blue eyes she saw Kitty, and
came forward. "Miss Tynan?" she asked, with an encompassing look.

Now Kitty was idiomatic in her speech at times, and she occasionally
used slang of the best brand, but she avoided those colloquialisms
which were of the vocabulary of the uneducated. Indeed, she had had no
inclination to use them, for her father had set her a good example, and
she liked to hear good English spoken. That was why Crozier's talk had
been like music to her; and she had been keen to distinguish between the
rhetorical method of Augustus Burlingame, who modelled himself on the
orators of all the continents, and was what might be called a synthetic
elocutionist. Kitty was as simple and natural as a girl could be, and
as a rule had herself in perfect command; but she was so stunned by the
sight of this petite person before her that, in reply to Mrs. Crozier's
question, she only said abruptly

"The same!"

Then she came to herself and could have bitten her tongue out for that
plunge into the vernacular of the West; and forthwith a great prejudice
was set up in her mind against Mona Crozier, in whose eyes she caught
a look of quizzical criticism or, as she thought, contemptuous comment.
That for one instant she had been caught unawares and so had put
herself at a disadvantage angered her; but she had been embarrassed and
confounded by this miniature goddess, and her reply was a vague echo
of talk she heard around her every day. Also she could have choked the
Young Doctor, whom she caught looking at her with wondering humour,
as though he was trying to see "what her game was," as he