"It is all--rot----"

"It isn't rot, Georgie. Mrs. Flippin knows about it. Becky inherits
from her Meredith grandmother. And her grandfather is Admiral Meredith
of Nantucket, with a big house on Beacon Street in Boston. And they
all belong to the inner circle."

He stared at her. "But Becky doesn't look it. She doesn't wear rings
and things."

"'Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes'? Oh, George, did you
think it had to be like that When people had money? Why, her pearls
belonged to a queen." She told him their history.

It came back to him with a shock that he had said to Becky that the
pearls cheapened her. "If they were _real_," he had said.

"It was rather strange the way I found it out," Madge was saying.
"Mary Flippin had on the most perfect gown--with all the marks on it of
exclusive Fifth Avenue. She was going to the Merriweather ball, and
Becky is to be there."

She saw him gather himself together. "It is rather a Cinderella story,
isn't it?" he asked, with assumed lightness.

"Yes," she said, "but I thought you'd like to know."

"What if I knew already?"

She laughed and let it go at that. "I'm lonesome, Georgie, talk to
me," she said. But he was not in a mood to talk. And at last she sent
him away. And when he had gone she sat there a long time and thought
about him. There had been look in his eyes which made her almost
sorry. It seemed incredible as she came to think of it that anybody
should ever be sorry for Georgie.

II

Since that night with Becky in the garden at Huntersfield George had
been torn by conflicting emotions. He knew himself at last in love.
He knew himself beaten at the game by a little shabby girl, and a lanky
youth who had been her champion.

He would not acknowledge that the thing was ended, and in the end he
had written her a letter. He cried to Heaven that a marriage between
her and young Paine would be a crime. "How can you love him,
Becky--you are mine."

The letter had been returned unopened. His burning phrases might have
been dead ashes for all the good they had done. She had not read them.

And now Madge had told him the unbelievable thing--that Becky
Bannister, the shabby Becky of the simple cottons and the stubbed
shoes, was rich, not as Waterman was rich, flamboyantly, vulgarly, with
an eye to letting all the world know. But rich in a thoroughbred
fashion, scorning display--he knew the kind, secure in a knowledge of
the unassa