issue and ignoring all else.

There was the rub. She could not get out of her mind the picture of
Mrs. Sharpe chatting gaily with him, smiling up at him and all but
fawning upon him, in full view of any number of people who knew both
Agnes and Bobby.

"You have made a deliberate choice of your companions, Mr. Burnit,
after being warned against them from more than one source," she told
him, aflame with indignant jealousy, but speaking with the rigidity
common in such quarrels, "and you may abide by your choice."

"Agnes!" he protested. "You don't mean--"

"I mean just this," she interrupted him coldly, "that I certainly can
not afford to be seen in public, and don't particularly care to
entertain in private, any one who permits himself to be seen in public
with, or entertained in private by, the notorious Mrs. Frank L.
Sharpe."

They were both of them pale, both trembling, both stiffened by hurt
and rebellious pride. Bobby gazed at her a moment in a panic, and saw
no relenting in her eyes, in her pose, in her compressed lips. She was
still thinking of the way Mrs. Sharpe had looked at him.

"Very well," said he, quite calmly; "since our arrangements for this
evening are off, I presume I may as well accept that invitation to
dine at Sharpe's," and with this petty threat he left the house.

At the Idlers' he was met by a succession of grins that were more
aggravating because for the most part they were but scantily
explained. Nick Allstyne, indeed, did take him into a corner, with a
vast show of secrecy, requested him to have an ordinance passed,
through his new and influential friends, turning Bedlow Park into a
polo ground; while Payne Winthrop added insult to injury by shaking
hands with him and most gravely congratulating him--but upon what he
would not say. Bobby was half grinning and yet half angry when he left
the club and went over for his usual half hour at the gymnasium.
Professor Henry H. Bates was also grinning.

"See you're butting in with the swell mob," observed Mr. Bates
cheerfully. "Getting your name in the paper, ain't you, along with the
fake heavyweights and the divorces?" and before Bobby's eyes he thrust
a copy of the yellowest of the morning papers, wherein it was set
forth that Mr. and Mrs. Frank L. Sharpe had entertained a notable box
party at the Orpheum, the night before, consisting of Samuel Stone,
William Garland and Robert Burnit, the latter of whom, it was rumored,
was soon to be id