erior oracle.

Then Mr. Blair said slowly, "And Bobby couldn't see her?"

He had an air of asking if Bobby were indeed of adamant and Mrs. Blair
hesitated imperceptibly over the sweeping negative. Equally slowly, "Oh,
Bobby _liked_ her, of course--she may have turned his head," she threw
out, "but I don't believe he ever lost it for a moment. And after he met
Ruth that summer at Plattsburg----"

The implication floated there, tenuous, iridescent. Even to Maria
Angelina's eyes it was an arch of promise.

Ruth was their daughter, the cousin of her own age. And the unknown
Bobby was some one who liked Ruth. And he was some one whom this Leila
Grey had tried to ensnare--although all the time Mrs. Blair suspected
her of liking more the Signor Barry Elder.

Hotly Maria Angelina's precipitous intuitions endorsed that supposition.
Of course this Leila liked that Barry Elder. Of course. . . . But she
had not taken him. He was an officer, then--without fortune. Maria
Angelina was familiar enough with _that_ story. But she had supposed
that here, in America, where dowries were not exigent and the young
people were free, there was more romance. And now it was not even
Leila's parents who had interfered, apparently, but Leila herself.

What was it Mrs. Blair had said? Thoroughly calculating. . . .
Thoroughly calculating--and blue eyes. . . .

Maria Angelina felt a quick little inrush of fear. If it should be
blue eyes that Americans--that is, to say now, that Barry
Elder--preferred----!

And then she wondered why, if this Leila with the blue eyes had not
taken Barry Elder before, Cousin Jane now regarded it as a foregone
conclusion between them? Was it because she could not get that Signor
Bobby Martin? Or was Barry Elder more successful now that he had left
the army?

She puzzled away at it, like a very still little cat at an
indestructible mouse, but dared say not a word. And while she worried
away her surface attention was caught by the glance of candid humor
exchanged between Mr. Blair and his wife.

"Ah, Jane, Jane," he was saying, in mock deprecation, "is that why we
are spending the summer at Wilderness, not two miles from the Martin
place----?"

Mrs. Blair was smiling, but her eyes were serious. "I preferred that to
having Ruth at a house party at the Martins," she said quietly.

At that Maria Angelina ceased to attend. She would know soon enough
about her Cousin Ruth and Bobby Martin. But as for Barry Elder a