t,"
he predicted easily, and Mrs. Blair turned to the arrangement of supper
with a slight anxiety which she dissembled beneath casual cheerfulness.

In her heart she was vexed. Dreadfully noticeable, she thought, that
persistent lagging of theirs. She might have expected it of Johnny
Byrd--he had a way of making new girls conspicuous--but she had looked
for better things from Maria Angelina.

It was too bad. It showed that as soon as you gave those cloistered
girls an inch they took an ell.

Outwardly she spoke with praise of her charge. Julia Martin, a youthful
aunt of Bob's, was curious about the girl.

"She's the loveliest creature," she declared with facile enthusiasm, as
she and Mrs. Blair delved into a hamper that the Martins' chauffeur and
butler had shouldered up before the picnickers.

"And so naively young--I don't see how her mother dared let her come so
far away."

"Oh--her mother wanted her to see America," Mrs. Blair gave back.

"She must be having a wonderful time," pursued the young lady. "She was
simply a picture at the dance. . . . Think of giving a mountain climb
the night after the dance," she added in a lower voice. "Bob and his
mother are perfectly mad. I think they want to kill their guests
off--perhaps there's method in their madness. . . . I never saw anything
quite like her," she resumed upon Maria Angelina. "I fancy Johnny Byrd
hasn't either!"

"Wasn't she pretty?" agreed Mrs. Blair with pleasantness, laying out the
spoons. "Yes, it's very interesting for her to have this," she went on,
"before she really knows Roman society. . . . She will come out as soon
as she returns from America, I suppose. The eldest sister is being
married this fall, and the next sister and Maria Angelina are about of
an age."

"Little hard on the sister unless she is a raving, tearing beauty," said
the intuitive Miss Martin with a laugh. "Perhaps they are sending Maria
Angelina away to keep her in abeyance!"

"Perhaps," Mrs. Blair assented. "At any rate, with this preliminary
experience, I fancy that little Ri-Ri will make quite a sensation over
there."

It was as if she said plainly to the curious young aunt that this
pilgrimage was only a prelude in Maria Angelina's career, and she
certainly did not take its possibilities for any serious finalities.

But the youthful aunt was not intimidated.

"She'll make a sensation over _here_ if she carries off the Byrd
millions," she threw out smartly.

Mrs.