obably."

"No other pearls?"

"No other jewels at all."

Clarissa stared. "Is that really true?" she asked, as if in the presence
of the unprecedented.

"Awfully true," Susy confessed. "But I think I can make the servants
obey me all the same."

This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, who was still
gravely scrutinizing her companion. After a while she brought forth
another question.

"Did you have to give up all your jewels when you were divorced?"

"Divorced--?" Susy threw her head back against the pillows and laughed.
"Why, what are you thinking of? Don't you remember that I wasn't even
married the last time you saw me?"

"Yes; I do. But that was two years ago." The little girl wound her arms
about Susy's neck and leaned against her caressingly. "Are you going to
be soon, then? I'll promise not to tell if you don't want me to."

"Going to be divorced? Of course not! What in the world made you think
so? "

"Because you look so awfully happy," said Clarissa Vanderlyn simply.

V.

IT was a trifling enough sign, but it had remained in Susy's mind: that
first morning in Venice Nick had gone out without first coming in to see
her. She had stayed in bed late, chatting with Clarissa, and expecting
to see the door open and her husband appear; and when the child left,
and she had jumped up and looked into Nick's room, she found it empty,
and a line on his dressing table informed her that he had gone out to
send a telegram.

It was lover-like, and even boyish, of him to think it necessary to
explain his absence; but why had he not simply come in and told her! She
instinctively connected the little fact with the shade of preoccupation
she had noticed on his face the night before, when she had gone to his
room and found him absorbed in letter; and while she dressed she had
continued to wonder what was in the letter, and whether the telegram he
had hurried out to send was an answer to it.

She had never found out. When he reappeared, handsome and happy as the
morning, he proffered no explanation; and it was part of her life-long
policy not to put uncalled-for questions. It was not only that her
jealous regard for her own freedom was matched by an equal respect for
that of others; she had steered too long among the social reefs and
shoals not to know how narrow is the passage that leads to peace of
mind, and she was determined to keep her little craft in mid-channel.
But the incident had lodg