o? The girl's heart
beat tumultuously as she neared the house, for through it, in great
tides, surged fear, and ecstasy--and love.

Madame herself opened the door. "Come in, dear!"

"Oh, Mrs. Marsh! Please, just a minute!"

"Mrs. Marsh again? I thought we were mother and daughter. Edith!" she
called. Then, in the next moment, Rosemary found herself in the
living-room, offering a rough, red hand to an exquisite creature who
seemed a blurred mass of pale green and burnished gold, redolent of
violets, and who murmured, in a beautifully modulated contralto: "How do
you do, Miss Starr! I am very glad to meet you."

The consciousness of the white gown underneath filled Rosemary's eyes
with tears of mortification, which Madame hastened to explain. "It's raw
and cold still," she said, "in spite of the calendar. These keen Spring
winds make one's eyes water. Here, my dear, have a cup of tea."

[Sidenote: An Uncomfortable Afternoon]

Rosemary took the cup with hands that trembled, and, while she sipped
the amber fragrance of it, struggled hard for self-possession. Madame
ignored her for the moment and chatted pleasantly with Edith. Then Alden
came in and shook hands kindly with Rosemary, though he had been
secretly annoyed when he learned she was coming. Afterward, he had a bad
quarter of an hour with himself while he endeavoured to find out why. At
last he had shifted the blame to Edith, deciding that she would think
Rosemary awkward and countrified, and that it would not be pleasant for
him to stand by and see it.

However, the most carping critic could have found no fault with Edith's
manner. If she felt any superiority, she did not show it. She accorded
to Rosemary the same perfect courtesy she showed Madame, and,
apparently, failed to notice that the girl had not spoken since the
moment of introduction.

She confined the conversation wholly to things Rosemary must have been
familiar with--the country, the cool winds that sometimes came when one
thought it was almost Summer, the perfect blend of Madame's tea, the
quaint Chinese pot, and the bad manners of the canary, who seemed to
take a fiendish delight in scattering the seed that was given him to
eat.

[Sidenote: Looking into the Crystal Ball]

Rosemary merely sat in the corner, tried to smile, and said, as
required, "Yes," or "No." Alden, pitying her from the depths of his
heart and yet secretly ashamed, tried unsuccessfully, now and then, to
draw her into the