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the ordeal of sittings again to any but a master. To-night, as the party
of four entered The Poodle Dog--the socially successful offspring of the
still enterprising and disreputable parent on the dark slope
above--Paula deliberately outstripped her companions and appropriated
the seat, at the corner table reserved for them, that faced the room.
Isabel was only too delighted to turn her back upon the staring people,
for it had occurred to her to-night, for the first time, to be uneasily
ashamed of her adopted relative. She had gone about with her several
times since her return from Europe, and absently disapproved of a
somewhat eccentric tendency in dress, but to all sorts of odd costuming
she had grown accustomed during her experience of art circles abroad.
This evening, as she stood in her living-room with Gwynne and watched
Paula sail down the broad staircase, she had a sudden vision of the
shanty at the northern base of Russian Hill where Mrs. Belmont had found
her little Mexican seamstress, deserted by her American husband, wailing
over the child she was about to leave. This story had always inspired
Isabel with the profoundest pity, tempering her frequent impatience and
disgust towards the family alien, but to-night she wished for a few
moments that her mother had sent Paula to a foundling asylum. She
glanced uneasily at Gwynne and fancied she could hear him slam the lid
of his breeding upon a supercilious sputter. Mrs. Paula's skirt and the
jacket on her arm were a respectable brown, but there was something in
the screaming red blouse, the immense cheap red hat, the blazing cheeks,
the pinched waist between swelling bust and hips, the already lifted
skirt--Paula always wore a train that she might at the same time achieve
longer lines and more subtle opportunities--exhibiting the pointed
bronze slipper with a large red bow and much open work above, that
suggested, if not the French cocotte, at least that San Francisco
variety known in local parlance as "South of Market Street Chippy." She
did not bear the remotest likeness to a lady. She looked common, fast.
Isabel wondered that she had never faced the truth before. It was as if
a wave of final criticism heaved from the brain of the man whose life
had been passed in the best societies of the world across to hers. But
Gwynne was imperturbable and polite, and as they rode down-town in the
bright cars Paula thought him "fearfully nice" and was quite sure that
he admi