earthstone huggers, degenerates; and declare that they lack nerve and
force to rescue themselves from degeneration! And here without
hesitation this young man----" At this moment the salon door opened,
and one of the ladies he had been expecting came in, the youngest one,
Miss Molly Malines, in a tulle dress, an enormous white hat, a light
scarf over her shoulders, and the remains of recent tears on her face.

"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" she exclaimed, half putting out her hand and
drawing it back again, as she bit her lips: "I thought I should find
Mary here; I wanted to see her first to _cry_ with! but of course it is
you I _should_ see and not cry with!"

She gave a little gasp and put her handkerchief to her eyes to his
consternation; then to his relief controlled herself.

"Maurice has just told me _everything_," she repeated the word with
much the same desperation that De Presle-Vaulx had put into a gesture
which to Bulstrode had signified ruin.

"He's too wonderful! too _glorious_, Mr. Bulstrode, isn't he? I loved
him before, but I _adore_ him now! He's glorious. I never heard
anything so terrible and so silly!"

Bright tears sprang to brighter eyes, and she dashed them away.

("She's adorable") he was obliged to acknowledge it.

"Why, how could you be so cruel; yes, I will say it, so cruel, so hard,
so brutal?"

"_Brutal_?"--he fairly whispered the word in his surprise.

"Why, fancy Maurice in the West, in the dreadful Western life, in that
climate----!"

"Why, it is the Garden of Eden," murmured Bulstrode.

"Oh, I mean to say with cattle and cowboys."

"Come," interrupted her father's friend, practically, "you don't know
what you are talking about, Molly. You don't talk like an American
girl. They've spoiled De Presle-Vaulx, and this will make a man of
him!"

Miss Malines called out in scorn:

"_A man of him_! What do you think he is? He's the finest man I ever
saw. You don't know him. Just because he has a title and his mother
spoils him, and because he has been a little reckless in debts and
things, you throw him over as you do all the French race without
knowing them!"

Her tears had dried and her cheeks flamed.

"Why, Maurice has served three years as a common soldier in the
Madagascar Army; and _that's_ no cinch! Cuba's a joke to it. He's had
the fever and marched with it. He's slept all night with no covering
but the clothes he had worn for weeks. He's eaten bread and drunk
di