elyn's hand, and she was taken out again into the dance by the
best partner there. We may trust her to Sin Saxon and Frank
Scherman, and her own "feat-footedness;" everything will not go by
her any more, and she but twenty.

Marmaduke Wharne watched it all with that keen glance of his that was
like a level line of fire from under the rough, gray brows.

"I am glad you saw that," said Leslie Goldthwaite, watching also, and
watching him.

"By the light of your own little text,--'kind, and bright, and
pleasant'? You think it will do me good?"

"I think it _was_ good; and I am glad you should really know Sin
Saxon--at the first." And at the best; Marmaduke Wharne quite understood
her. She gave him, unconsciously, the key to a whole character. It might
as easily have been something quite different that he should have first
seen in this young girl.

Next morning they all met on the piazza. Leslie Goldthwaite presented
Sin Saxon to Mr. Wharne.

"So, my dear," he said, without preface, "you are the belle of the
place?"

He looked to see how she would take it. There was not the first twinkle
of a simper about eye or lip. Surprised, but quite gravely, she looked
up, and met his odd bluntness with as quaint an honesty of her own. "I
was pretty sure of it a while ago," she said. "And perhaps I was, in a
demoralized sort of a way. But I've come down, Mr. Wharne,--like the
coon. I'll tell you presently," she went on,--and she spoke now with
warmth,--"who is the real belle,--the beautiful one of this place! There
she comes!"

Miss Craydocke, in her nice, plain cambric morning-gown, and her smooth
front, was approaching down the side passage across the wing. Just as
she had come one morning, weeks ago; and it was the identical "fresh
petticoat" of that morning she wore now. The sudden coincidence and
recollection struck Sin Saxon as she spoke. To her surprise, Miss
Craydocke and Marmaduke Wharne moved quickly toward each other, and
grasped hands like old friends.

"Then you know all about it!" Sin Saxon said, a few minutes after, when
she got her chance. "But you _don't_ know, sir," she added, with a
desperate candor, "the way I took to find it out! I've been tormenting
her, Mr. Wharne, all summer. And I'm heartily ashamed of it."

Marmaduke Wharne smiled. There was something about this girl that suited
his own vein. "I doubt she _was_ tormented," he said quietly.

At that Sin Saxon smiled, too, and looked up out of her h