"My cousin isn't
that heroic sort, even if she were devoted to a man. She doesn't care
two pins for your Mr. Long, and I fancy he knows it by this time."

"Not care for him?" cried Patricia in amazement. "Why in the world did
she and her mother come to see him then? I thought they were engaged."

Rosamond shook her head slowly and emphatically. "Not at all," she said
calmly. "She thought she might like him well enough last fall, but he
has developed such queer tastes recently--burying himself on that
ridiculous chicken-farm and taking up with stupid little boys who
develop measles when they run away from school to visit their
benefactor, that she really has had quite enough of him without marrying
him."

Patricia was silent, puckering her brows over the problem of unrewarded
virtue, while Rosamond Merton watched her with something like a twinkle
in her long eyes.

"It seems pretty hard that Mr. Long has to lose his happiness just
because he's done right and been kind," she said finally, with a little
sigh at the topsy-turvy ways of this wilful world. "He's saving Danny
Sneath from growing up a horrid worthless man like his father--that's
plain from Danny coming back on the sly to see him--and he's doing
splendidly with Red Top, and yet he doesn't get what he wants."

"He shouldn't want what he can't get then," smiled Rosamond, indulgent
as far as Patricia was concerned. "Don't worry your pretty head about
such stupid things--men always get over disappointments like that. He'll
probably be in love with the next girl who happens to look at him twice.
Tell me how you've been putting in the time since I ran off so
unceremoniously. Have you been fearfully homesick?"

Patricia abandoned Mr. Long and his deserts reluctantly. "He ought to be
happy and I am sure he will," she insisted warmly. "People always get
paid back in the same coin they use." A sudden memory of her own debt
made her add, more shyly, "You ought to believe in that--after all the
kindness you've shown me. And I do want you to know that I'm going to
pay you back just a tiny bit some day. I don't know how, but I'm going
to do it."

Rosamond's slow smile answered her fully, and she plunged into an eager
account of the way in which she had been taken into the inner circles of
Artemis Lodge and made to feel so entirely at home. "They've been
wonderfully nice to me," she said gayly. "I've had a splendid time each
day, and my lessons have gone beautifully, t