ich had helped to establish her
reputation as a beauty overspread Miss Brady's cheek. "I missed it this
morning and didn't have time to hunt for it, and I was worried. I don't
want to show it to her. It cost a good deal."

"It must have. They say a ruby's the only stone you can't imitate."

"What do you mean?" Miss Brady's cheeks grew still redder. "Why don't
you save your big talk for Saxon? You may need it. Why don't you mind
your own affairs, and leave mine alone?"

"Leave that on the kitchen floor for mother to find and sweep up in a
broken dust-pan, or one of the kids to show to your father?"

"Why not? Haven't I got a right to do what I want with my own money?
Haven't I got a right to do what I want with myself? Who are you to
dictate to me, with the Randall girl making a fool of you? Why----"

"That will be all." Though Miss Brady's voice had been threatening to
make itself heard throughout all the three stores in one, she stopped
obediently, looking defiant but frightened, but when her cousin spoke
again the ring of authority which had shocked her was gone from his
voice.

"Don't be scared. It's nothing to me what you do, and I shan't talk too
much. You know me, Mag."

"No, I don't, not lately. You act doped, not half there. I can't make
you out. If you think--if you suspect----"

"I don't. It's nothing to me. I'm due at Saxon's. Put your glass beads
away before Ward sees them. Good luck to you."

Miss Brady, standing quite still in one of her carefully cultivated,
statuesque poses, watched her cousin cross the street and disappear into
a narrow and shabbily painted doorway there. Then she took his advice,
and producing a red morocco wrist bag from under the counter, shut the
necklace into it with a vicious snap, as if she did not derive so much
pleasure as before from handling it now.

Her cousin climbed the three flights of stairs to Judge Saxon's office.
The stairs were dingy and looked unswept, and a pane of glass in the
door of the untenanted suite across the landing from the Judge's was
broken. Nothing about the Judge's quarters indicated that he was Colonel
Everard's attorney, a big man in the town before the Everard regime, and
under it--an unusual combination. His office was shabby outside and in.
The lettering on the door, Saxon and Burr, Attorneys-at-Law, looked
newer than it was by contrast, and it was still only six months old.
Theodore Burr had his delayed junior partnership at last.