were ready to sally forth from the Manhattan Hotel on that
Thanksgiving evening. At twenty-five, a soundly healthy and vigorous
twenty-five, it is impossible for mind and nerves, however wrought
upon, to make serious inroads upon surface charms. The hope of
emancipation from her hideous slavery had been acting upon the girl
like a powerful tonic. She had gained several pounds in the three
intervening days; her face had filled out, color had come back in all
its former beauty to her lips. Perhaps there was some slight aid from
art in the extraordinary brilliancy of her eyes.

Presbury inventoried her with a succession of grunts of satisfaction.
"Yes, he'll want you," he said. "You'll strike him as just the show
piece he needs. And he's too shrewd not to be aware that his choice is
limited."

"You can't frighten me," said Mildred, with a radiant, coquettish
smile--for practice. "Nothing could frighten me."

"I'm not trying," replied Presbury. "Nor will Siddall frighten you. A
woman who's after a bill-payer can stomach anything."

"Or a man," said Mildred.

"Oh, your mother wasn't as bad as all that," said Presbury, who never
lost an opportunity.

Mrs. Presbury, seated beside her daughter in the cab, gave an
exclamation of rage. "My own daughter insulting me!" she said.

"Such a thought did not enter my head," protested Mildred. "I wasn't
thinking of anyone in particular."

"Let's not quarrel now," said Presbury, with unprecedented amiability.
"We must give Bill a spectacle of the happy family."

The cab entered the porte-cochere of a huge palace of white stone just
off Fifth Avenue. The house was even grander than they had
anticipated. The wrought-iron fence around it had cost a small
fortune; the house itself, without reference to its contents, a large
fortune. The massive outer doors were opened by two lackeys in
cherry-colored silk and velvet livery; a butler, looking like an
English gentleman, was waiting to receive them at the top of a short
flight of marble steps between the outer and the inner entrance doors.
As Mildred ascended, she happened to note the sculpturing over the
inner entrance--a reclining nude figure of a woman, Cupids with
garlands and hymeneal torches hovering about her.

Mildred had been in many pretentious houses in and near New York, but
this far surpassed the grandest of them. Everything was brand new,
seemed to have been only that moment placed, and was of the
costliest