o the heart of woman.

"He's simply mad about you, Cally! The way he looked and looked at
you!... And he never even listened to poor little me, chatting away
beside him, and frightened out of my wits all the time, he's so lordly."

This was when dinner was over, and the guests were strolling from the
little dining-room for coffee in the winter garden. Cally smiled. She
had observed that most of her best friend's time had gone, not to
chatting to Hugo, but to lavishing her delicious ignorance and working
her telling optic system on J. Forsythe Avery, who was so evidently now
to be released for general circulation....

Mats seized the moment to inquire, simply, whether she or Evey was to be
maid of honor; and Cally then laughed merrily.

"Perhaps we shall have it done by a justice of the peace.... Mats,
you're the greatest little romancer I ever saw. How you got it into your
pretty noddle that Mr. Canning has the faintest interest in me I can't
imagine...."

Willie Kerr, too, paid his tribute, having momentarily withdrawn himself
from mamma, whose loyal escort he was once more. Willie was a shade
balder than last year, when he had played his great part in Cally's life
and then sunk below her horizon; a shade more rotund; a shade rosier in
the face. But he was as genial as ever, being well lined now with a menu
to his own taste and an exceptionally good champagne.

"Knew he'd come back, Carlisle," said Willie, standing before a florid
oil-painting he had lured her into a parlor to look at. "Said to Eva
Payne in September--no, August, one Sunday it was--'Canning'll be back
soon as she gets home,' s'I. 'Don't know what happened, that trouble in
the spring. Don't want to know--none of my business. But mark my words,
Eva Payne,' s'I, 'Hugo Canning'll be back.' Fact," said Willie, grinning
cordially. "Funny how I knew. And don't forget, Carlisle, m'dear, 'twas
your Uncle Cosmo did it all! Hey? Remember that tea in my apartments?
Always keep a spare room ready for Uncle Cosmo, and, by gad, I'll come
and spend my summers with you."

And later, Eva Payne, the once far unattainable, asked Mrs. Heth and her
daughter for luncheon on Friday--"with a few of our friends." Mamma
received the invitation like an accolade. Truly that ten thousand
dollars might well have remained in bank, subject to personal check....

The little dinner, with its air of everything being all settled, was a
huge success; a bit too huge to Hugo's way of