laughed, made Ballard liken him to an
unnamed singer he had once heard in the part of _Mephistopheles_.

The overlooking glance necessarily included Wingfield's table
companions: Mrs. Van Bryck's high-bred contours lost in adipose; Dosia's
cool and placid prettiness--the passionless charms of unrelieved
milk-whiteness of skin and masses of flaxen hair and baby-blue eyes; the
Blacklock boy's square shoulders, heavy jaw, and rather fine eyes--which
he kept resolutely in his plate for the better part of the time.

At the next table Ballard saw a young man with the brown of an out-door
occupation richly colouring face and hands; an old one with the
contradictory "H'm--ha!" written out large in every gesture; and two
young women who looked as if they might be the sharers of the single
Christian name. Miss Bigelow, the remaining member of the party, had
apparently been lost in the dinner seating. At all events, Ballard did
not identify her.

"Well?" said Miss Craigmiles, seeming to intimate that he had looked
long enough.

"I shall know Mr. Wingfield, if I ever see him again," remarked Ballard.
"Whose guest is he? Or are you all Mrs. Van Bryck's guests?"

"What an idea!" she scoffed. "Cousin Janet is going into the absolutely
unknown. She doesn't reach even to the Alleghanies; her America stops
short at Philadelphia. She is the chaperon; but our host isn't with us.
We are to meet him in the wilds of Colorado."

"Anybody I know?" queried Ballard.

"No. And--oh, yes, I forgot; Professor Gardiner is to join us later. I
knew there must be one more somewhere. But he was an afterthought.
I--Cousin Janet, I mean--got his acceptance by wire at Omaha."

"Gardiner is not going to join you," said Ballard, with the cool
effrontery of a proved friend. "He is going to join me."

"Where? In Cuba?"

"Oh, no; I am not going to Cuba. I am going to live the simple life;
building dams and digging ditches in Arcadia."

He was well used to her swiftly changing moods. What Miss Elsa's
critics, who were chiefly of her own sex, spoke of disapprovingly as her
flightiness, was to Ballard one of her characterizing charms. Yet he was
quite unprepared for her grave and frankly reproachful question:

"Why aren't you going to Cuba? Didn't Mr. Lassley telegraph you not to
go to Arcadia?"

"He did, indeed. But what do you know about it?--if I may venture to
ask?"

For the first time in their two years' acquaintance he saw her visibly
embarra