ith good red plebeian blood in their veins, and no voices in the
subconscious brain but those that bade them eat and drink and feed the
race. No, she decided, Rosewater could work out of its present inertia
by itself, and she began to wish her guests would go home; she was tired
of their inanities. Her disappointment in Hyliard Wheaton, whom she had
admired from a distance ever since her return, but who had never
succumbed to her charm until to-night, had much to do with her sense of
futility. He had read nothing, seen nothing, experienced nothing. He had
no ambition beyond living in San Francisco and enjoying life there. His
fine well-bred face with its high brow and smiling, slightly superior,
gaze, had suggested--the more particularly, perhaps, as his figure was
superb--possibilities both intellectual and romantic. Isabel told him
politely never to ride out without using the telephone first, and had
her excuses already coined. At least ten men be sides Gwynne were
hovering about Dolly Boutts, like humming-birds about the nectar of a
full-blown rose. They were blind to the fact that her voluptuous
suggestion was but a caprice of nature. Although, no doubt, she would
make the best of wives and mothers, she was as incapable of any depth of
passion as the frail fluffy creatures about her, and quite indifferent
to anything in man beyond his admiration. Up to the present she had
found cards far more interesting, particularly as she had known all the
Rosewater men since childhood; more particularly, perhaps, as this was
her first large party. She chattered, partly by instinct, partly in
deference to the traditional animation of the American girl; and it was
quite likely that the ultimate man would lead her to the altar under the
delusion that she was a brilliant woman with a genuine temperament.
Isabel wondered somewhat contemptuously at Gwynne's evident enthusiasm;
she would have given him credit for more experience and perspicacity;
but concluded that at a party a man could only judge a girl by her
exterior charms; and certainly Dolly had all her goods in the front
window.

After supper they danced the old Virginia reel with great zest, and even
a few stray waltzes, then all left together at two o'clock; the older
women assuring Isabel formally that they had had a very pleasant
evening; but the girls and young men exclaimed that they had had a keen
time, a dandy time, and that their new hostess was too fine and dandy
for