ell, without effort or attitude. She had been to New
York and Boston for two winters; she had spent the previous summer at
Newport; it might have been her whole youth for the fluency, accuracy,
and familiarity of her detail, and the absence of provincial enthusiasm.
She was going abroad, probably in the spring. She had thought of going
to winter in Italy, but she would wait now until her sister was ready to
go with her. Mr. Grant of course knew that Euphemia was separated from
Mr. Rice--no--not until her father told him? Well--the marriage had been
a wild and foolish thing for both. But Euphemia was back again with them
in the San Francisco house; she had talked of coming to Tasajara to-day,
perhaps she might be there tonight. And, good heavens! it was actually
three o'clock already, and they must start at once for the Hall. She
would go and get her hat and return instantly.

It was true; he had been talking with her an hour--pleasantly,
intelligently, and yet with a consciousness of an indefinite
satisfaction beyond all this. It must have been surprise at her
transformation, or his previous misconception of her character. He had
been watching her features and wondering why he had ever thought them
expressionless. There was also the pleasant suggestion--common to
humanity in such instances--that he himself was in some way responsible
for the change; that it was some awakened sympathy to his own nature
that had breathed into this cold and faultless statue the warmth of
life. In an odd flash of recollection he remembered how, five years ago,
when Rice had suggested to her that she was "hard to please," she had
replied that she "didn't know, but that she was waiting to see." It did
not occur to him to wonder why she had not awakened then, or if this
awakening had anything to do with her own volition. It was not probable
that they would meet again after to-day, or if they did, that she would
not relapse into her former self and fail to impress him as she had now.
But--here she was--a paragon of feminine promptitude--already standing
in the doorway, accurately gloved and booted, and wearing a demure gray
hat that modestly crowned her decorously elegant figure.

They crossed the plaza side by side, in the still garish sunlight that
seemed to mock the scant shade of the youthful eucalyptus trees, and
presently fell in with the stream of people going in their direction.
The former daughters of Sidon, the Billingses, the Peterse