d dropped the lorgnon
on the floor. "By George!" she cried. "You're a man after my own
heart. Look at me! I'm a withered, haggard old woman, fierce as a
cat and ugly as sin. Why? Because all my life I've been baffled. I
was born as wild a bird, my dear, as yourself; but I never knew how
to get out of the cage and I was always getting into new ones. I
lacked--what-d'-y'-m'-call-it--initiative; and all this longing in me for
freedom"--she clutched the dangling fringes on her breast--"and life and
the choosing of my own path never had an outlet. It turned sour and
curdled, and became malice and all uncharitableness.

"Well, when I began to realize that Wilfred would probably give me a
companion in the cage I got sick. I could bear the cage myself, I'd
learned to do that; but I didn't want another she-bird molting around.
And then when it looked as if it would be Marcia Oldham I got sicker. It
drove me wild to think of that milk-faced chit of a girl, with a fool of
a mother that I've always despised! I tell you what you do, Miss Gipsy
Fortune-teller!" She rapped the arm of Ydo's chair emphatically. "Marry
Wilfred! Sure if you do," peering at her suspiciously, "that you won't
elope with some one else?"

"I may," said Ydo coolly. "Only I have had the experience twice before,
and it doesn't amuse me." Again, for the life of him, Hayden could not
decide whether this were the embroidery of fiction or the truth. "The
first man used scent on his handkerchief, and the second ate garlic with
his fingers. I couldn't endure either of them for a week."

"You rake!" chuckled Wilfred's mother, clapping the Mariposa on the
shoulder. "Marry Wilfred, do now! Make him president, at any rate a
foreign ambassador." She rose. "You've given me fresh hope. I feel twenty
years younger. Well, Mr. Heywood--Harden--whatever your name is, we've
treated you as if you were a piece of furniture."

"Regard me instead as a wall," said Hayden pleasantly, "which has ears
but no tongue. Won't you vouch for my discretion, Mademoiselle Mariposa?"

"As I would for the chairs and tables to which Mrs. Ames so amiably
compares you," smiled Ydo.

When Hayden returned from putting the old lady in her carriage he showed
all the elation of one who has scored heavily.

"Aha!" he cried. "Warning me one moment with serious argument against the
Inevitable ennui induced by settling in Eldorado and all the time
preparing to build your own castles there!"

"But not f