that Judith could not understand, and breaking into French at
intervals--Green River High School French, but she spoke it with an air,
narrowing her blue-gray eyes after an alluring fashion she had and
laughing her full-toned laugh. She was a full-blown, emphatic creature,
though she had been married only three years, and was Lil Gaynor still
to half the town.

Auburn-haired little Mrs. Kent had been lying down all the afternoon, as
her disapproving domestic had informed any one who inquired at the door
in a shrill voice that did not promote repose. She was very piquant and
enticing now, with her bright, slanting hazel eyes, and a contagious
laugh, but her dinner partner, Judith's father, was tired and hard to
amuse. He looked very boyish when he was tired; his blue eyes looked
large and pathetic.

The other two young women and Judith's mother, whose dark, low-browed
Madonna beauty was gracious and fresh to-night, set off by her
clear-blue gown, with a gardenia caught in her sheer, white scarf,
deserved the Honourable Joseph Grant's flowery name for them, the Three
Graces.

Before the Colonel's time and Judith's the Honourable Joe had been the
most important man in Green River, and in evening things, and after a
properly concocted cocktail he still looked it, florid and portly and
well set-up, with a big voice that could still sound hearty though it
rang rather empty and hollow sometimes. He looked ten years younger than
his old friend, Judge Saxon. The Judge's coat was getting shiny at the
seams, and--this appeared even more unfortunate to Judith--he was in the
habit of pointing out that it was shiny, and without embarrassment. Mrs.
Saxon's pearl-gray satin was of excellent quality, but of last year's
cut, and the modest neck was filled in with the net guimpe which she
affected at informal dinners. The Saxons were not quite in the picture,
but they were always very kind to Judith.

And if they were not in the picture, Mrs. Joseph Grant, certainly not
the youngest woman in the room, though she was not the oldest, occupied
the centre of it.

She was like the picture of the beautiful princess on the hill of glass,
in a book of Judith's, and besides, she had once been a real debutante,
of the kind that Judith liked to read about in novels, before the
Honourable Joe brought her from Boston to Green River. Judith liked to
look at her better than any one here except Colonel Everard.

"Cosmopolitan--ten years ahead of