ideals. To-night she would be an old-time belle: as Concha Argueello had
been just a century ago, as Guadalupe Hathaway, Mrs. Hunt McLane, Nina
Randolph, and "The Three Macs," had been in the city's youth; as Helena
Belmont had been but twenty years before. She recalled the oft-told
story of the night of Mrs. Yorba's great ball, in the house next to the
one which was to be the theatre of her own debut, when Magdalena Yorba,
Tiny Montgomery, Ila Brannan, and the wonderful Helena had been
introduced to San Francisco, and the most distracting belle the town had
ever known had turned the heads of fifty men. It was far easier to be a
belle in that simpler time than to-day, when the San Franciscan vied
with the New-Yorker in the magnificence of furnishing and attire, and a
mere million was no longer a fortune. And the city more than maintained
its old standard of beauty, for its population had nearly doubled; the
handsome girls of the upper class had learned the art of dress, and even
among the shop-girls there was a surfeit of pretty faces and fine busts.
As to the demi-monde it was the pick of America, for obvious reason.

But Isabel was an ardent dreamer, and as she sat in her silent old home,
high above the city's unresting life, she imagined herself into a
blissful picture where she should realize to the full all the desires
dear to the heart of a girl. It was true that she had created a _furore_
that night at Arcot, but her triumph had been extinguished by fright and
the tragedies that came in its train. And no triumph abroad ever quite
equals the conquest of your own territory. Isabel concluded that if it
were a matter of a single season, she would rather reign in San
Francisco than in London--but her dreams were cut short by Gwynne's
rapid step on the plank walk, and a moment later he was tapping on her
door.

She looked up at him with undisguised expectancy.

"I am going to enjoy it," she said. "I shall accept it. I don't care!"

"I should hope so, after all the trouble I have had." He sat down in a
low chair beside the dressing-table and facing her. "Hofer had been
turned out of the house and had taken refuge at the Mission. I took an
automobile and rushed out there, only to find that he and his friends
had concluded to come in and dine at one of the restaurants. Definite,
but I know their tastes pretty well, and finally tracked them down. By
that time I was starved, but when the dinner was over Hofer went with