adiance gone from her face.

"And you have been carrying that about in addition to everything else?"

"It was brutal to tell you this to-night! I can't imagine why I did,
particularly as I have never told even my mother--who, like everybody
else not necessarily in the secret, thinks that Zeal killed himself in
despair over his failing health. But--yes, I remember that dress now--I
rarely notice the details of women's clothes--but I remember admiring
those blue lilies on that airy white stuff--I suppose you suddenly
brought the whole thing back as vividly as if we were at Capheaton
instead of out here on the edge of creation. You must forgive me and
forget it."

"Yes I will! I'll forget everything for a week." She wheeled about and
rubbed her cheeks. Gwynne stooped suddenly and kissed the little black
mole on her shoulder.

"This is all I ask in return for the baubles," he murmured; and then as
he met a blazing eye: "Could I do less than restore your lovely color?
But I must fly and get into my togs."

XXXIII

The old-fashioned interior of the Polk House, with, on the lower floor,
its double parlors connected by sliding doors, its narrow central hall,
and its many shapeless rooms of varying size, had been entirely
remodelled by the essentially modern Mrs. Hofer. Her husband had wished
to build an imposing mass of shingles and stones, but Mrs. Hofer was far
too impatient to wait a year--perhaps two, if there were strikes--to
take up her abode on Nob Hill, and the Polk House was in the market.
Perhaps something in the stolid uncompromising exterior of the old
barrack appealed to her irresistibly, mausoleum that it was of an
aristocratic past. But upon the interior she wasted no sentiment, and
some half a million of her husband's dollars. There were now three great
rooms on the lower floor and four small ones, besides a circular hall
with a spiral marble stair. The drawing-room, which ran from east to
west, was one of the most notable rooms in the country, had been the
subject of violent controversy, newspaper and verbal, and was a
perpetual delight to the dramatic soul of its mistress. The most
original artist the State had produced had painted a deep frieze which
was a series of the strange moonlight scenes that had made his fame: the
deep sulphurous blue of the California night sky, the long black
shadows, the wind-driven trees, the low desolate adobe houses abandoned
in the towns settled by Spain. Now and