ll cousin over with the thoroughness of an inventory. "It must be
the hair, Ri-Ri. . . . You've lost that little Saint Susy air."

"But there is no Saint Susy," Ri-Ri interposed gayly, lightly fingering
the dark curves of her hair.

Truly--for Johnny--she had done her darndest! Surely he would be
pleased.

"If you'd only let me cut that lower--you're simply swaddled in
tulle----"

Startled, Maria glanced down at the hollows of her young bosom, at the
scantiness of her bodice suspended only by bands of sheerest gauze. She
wondered what Mamma would say, if she could see her so, without that
drape of net. . . .

"You have the duckiest shoulder blades," said Ruth.

"Oh--do _they_ show?" cried Maria Angelina in dismay. She twisted for a
view and the movement drew Ruth's glance along her lithe figure.

"We ought to have cut two inches more off," she declared, and now
Ri-Ri's glance fled down to the satin slippers with their crossed
ribbons, to the narrow, silken ankles, to the slender legs above the
ankles. It seemed to her an utterly limitless exhibition. And Ruth was
proposing two more inches!

Apprehensively she glanced about to make sure that no scissors were in
prospect.

"But you'll do," Ruth pronounced, and in relief Maria Angelina
relinquished the center of the mirror, and slipped out into the gallery
that ran around three sides of the house.

It was built like a chalet, but Maria Angelina had seen no such chalet
in her childish summers in Switzerland. Over the edge of the rail she
gazed into the huge hall, cleared now for dancing. The furniture had
been pushed back beneath the gallery where it was arranged in intimate
little groups for future tete-a-tetes, except a few lounging chairs left
on the black bear-skins by the chimney-piece. In one corner a screen of
pine boughs and daisies shut off the musicians from the streets, and in
the opposite corner an English man-servant was presiding over a huge
silver punch bowl.

To Maria Angelina, accustomed to Italian interiors, the note was
buoyantly informal. And the luxury of service in this informality was a
piquant contrast. . . . No one seemed to care what anything cost. . . .
They gave dances in a log chalet and sent to New York for the favors and
to California for the fruit. . . . Into the huge punch-bowl they poured
wine of a value now incredible, since the supply could never be
replenished. . . .

Very different would be Lucia's wedding party in the P