ral consequence her repressed but still
rebellious passions diffused their poison throughout her nature. There
were times when she was seized with a frantic desire to inflict injury
upon some other woman, and at all times she found relief in sharp
criticism, in flinging mud at mantles spotless to the casual eye. She
passed for being very piquante and clever in a town where so little
happened except the turning over of money, and where the conversation
alternated between chickens and cards. She was sure that she scented a
scandal here, and her very nostrils quivered with anticipation; the
while she hated Isabel more bitterly for taking a lover instead of an
eternal husband.

"Looks as if she didn't mean to introduce him to us," she remarked, with
an attempt at frigid criticism. "He don't dance so well but what the
girls could get on without him. Isabel might give him a chance to
exhibit his conversational powers--My! if he ain't going to dance again
with Dolly Boutts! I'd like to know how Isabel fancies that!"

Gwynne, who liked any sort of exercise, and had been reading the United
States Statutes the greater part of the day, danced with the girls to
whom Isabel introduced him, returning no less than three times to the
exuberant Miss Boutts, whose step suited his, and whom he thought one of
the prettiest girls he had seen in America. Mr. Boutts's mother had been
the daughter of an Italian restaurant keeper in San Francisco, and his
heiress inherited a fine flashing pair of black eyes, a mass of black
hair, and a voluptuous but buoyant figure. She had inherited nothing of
the languor and fire of the Italian race, but chattered as incessantly
as any American girl, and had the mind and character of sixteen, in
spite of her almost full-blown beauty. Having an instinct for dress in
addition to a liberal allowance from her father, she was always a
notable figure in Main Street; and when in San Francisco was pleasantly
aware that she was by no means unnoticed in the fashionable throngs of
the hotels and Kearny Street. To-night she wore a gown of black net
revealing her superb shoulders and arms, and bunches of red carnations
that emphasized the red of her full pouting lips. She danced with a
graceful energy and looked unutterable things out of her great black
eyes while talking of the weather. Gwynne thought her a creature of
infinite possibilities, beside whom Isabel was a statue in ivory.

Just before supper he was introduc