o be with
us again?"

"You go and see her for yourself; and if you don't say she is the
worst beat out and the tiredest mortal that ye have ever seen you'll be
surprisin' me. My God, Linda, they ain't nothin' in bein' rich if it can
do to a girl what has been done to Eileen!"

"Oh, well," said Linda impatiently, "don't condemn all money because
Eileen has not found happiness with it. The trouble has been that
Eileen's only chance to be rich came to her through the wrong kind of
people."

"Well, will ye jist tell me, then," said Katy, "how it happened that
Eileen's ma was a sister to that great beef of a man, which same is hard
on self-rayspectin' beef; pork would come nearer."

"Yes," said Linda, "I'll tell you. Eileen's mother had a big streak of
the same coarseness and the same vulgarity in HER nature, or she could
not have reared Eileen as she did. She probably had been sent to school
and had better advantages than the boy through a designing mother of
her own. Her first husband must have been a man who greatly refined and
educated her. We can't ever get away from the fact that Daddy believed
in her and loved her."

"Yes," said Katy, "but he was a fooled man. She wasn't what we thought
she was. Many's the time I've stood injustice about the accounts and
household management because I wouldn't be wakin' him up to what he was
bound to for life."

"That doesn't help us," said Linda. "I must go in and face them."

She handed her books to Katy, and went into the living room She
concentrated on John Gilman first, and a wee qualm of disgust crept
through her soul when she saw that after weeks of suffering he was once
more ready to devote himself to Eileen. Linda marveled at the power a
woman could hold over a man that would force him to compromise with his
intellect, his education and environment. Then she turned her attention
to Eileen, and the shock she received was informing. She studied her an
instant incredulously, then she went to her and held out her hand.

"How do you do?" she said as cordially as was possible to her. "This is
unexpected."

Her mind was working rapidly, yet she could not recall ever having seen
a woman quite so beautiful as Eileen. She was very certain that the
color on her cheeks was ebbing and rising with excitement; it was no
longer so deep as to be stationary. She was very certain that her eyes
had not been darkened as to lids or waxed as to lashes. Her hair was
beautifully dressed i