r life seemed to be spoiled, too; though she did not
view the ruin with complaisance. These Lamb women thought her and her
cane ridiculous, did they? she said to herself. That was their parvenu
blood: to think because a girl's father worked for their grandfather
she had no right to be rather striking in style, especially when the
striking WAS her style. Probably all the other girls and women would
agree with them and would laugh at her when they got together, and,
what might be fatal, would try to make all the men think her a silly
pretender. Men were just like sheep, and nothing was easier than for
women to set up as shepherds and pen them in a fold. "To keep out
outsiders," Alice thought. "And make 'em believe I AM an outsider.
What's the use of living?"

All seemed lost when a trim young man appeared, striding out of a
cross-street not far before her, and, turning at the corner, came
toward her. Visibly, he slackened his gait to lengthen the time of his
approach, and, as he was a stranger to her, no motive could be ascribed
to him other than a wish to have a longer time to look at her.

She lifted a pretty hand to a pin at her throat, bit her lip--not with
the smile, but mysteriously--and at the last instant before her shadow
touched the stranger, let her eyes gravely meet his. A moment later,
having arrived before the house which was her destination, she halted
at the entrance to a driveway leading through fine lawns to the
intentionally important mansion. It was a pleasant and impressive
place to be seen entering, but Alice did not enter at once. She paused,
examining a tiny bit of mortar which the masons had forgotten to scrape
from a brick in one of the massive gate-posts. She frowned at this tiny
defacement, and with an air of annoyance scraped it away, using the
ferrule of her cane an act of fastidious proprietorship. If any one had
looked back over his shoulder he would not have doubted that she lived
there.

Alice did not turn to see whether anything of the sort happened or not,
but she may have surmised that it did. At all events, it was with
an invigorated step that she left the gateway behind her and went
cheerfully up the drive to the house of her friend Mildred.

CHAPTER IV

Adams had a restless morning, and toward noon he asked Miss Perry to
call his daughter; he wished to say something to her.

"I thought I heard her leaving the house a couple of hours ago--maybe
longer," the nurse told him.