't tell whether he was simply natural, or whether he was
giving this domestic color to their interview on purpose. She rather
thought it was the latter.

"To-morrow at ten, then!" he said cheerfully to Flora. The stiff
curtains rustled behind him and the two women were left together.

"What an important appointment," said Clara lightly, "to bring a man at
this hour to make it."

"Oh, it is, awfully!" Flora answered in the same key. "To choose my
engagement ring."

Clara's delicate brows flew upward, and though Clara herself made no
comment, the quick facial movement said, "I don't believe it."

VI

BLACK MAGIC

The memory of Clara's incredulous glance remained with her as something
curious, and she was not unprepared to be challenged when, the next
morning, she hurried down the hall, drawing on her gloves. Clara's door
did open, but the lady herself, yawning lightly on the threshold, had
this time no questions for her. "Remember the luncheon," she advised,
"and by the way, Ella wants us to sit in their box to-night. Don't
forget to tell Harry."

Flora threw back a gay "All right," but she was in danger of forgetting
even the object of their errand, once she and Harry were out in the
bright glare of the street. The wind, keen and resinous from the wet
Presidio woods, blew at their back down the short block of pavement,
and buffeted them, broadside, as they waited on the corner for the
slow-crawling little car. In spite of the blustering air Flora insisted
on the side seat of the "dummy," and, catching her hat with one hand,
pressing down her fluttering skirts with the other, she laughed, now
sidelong at Harry, now out at the dancing face of the bay.

Each succeeding cross-street gave up a flash of blue water. The short
blocks slid by, first stone fronts and fresh lawns, stucco and tiles;
then here and there corner lots, the great gray, towered, wooden
mansions the stock-brokers of the "seventies" built, and below them,
like a contingent of shabby-genteel relations, the narrow gray wooden
faces of what was "smart" in the "sixties". It was a continuous progress
backward toward the old, the original town. There was no stately
nucleus. This town was a succession of widening ripples of progress,
each newer, more polished than the last, but not different in quality
from the old center that still teemed--a region of frail wooden
rookeries full of foreign contending interests, haunted with the
adventures of i