k.
But from the first glimpse of the booted figure among the trees she had
sensed other things. King would have blushed had he known how
picturesque he bulked in her eyes; how now, while she smiled at him so
ingenuously, she was doing his thorough-going masculinity full tribute;
how the ruggedness of him, the very scent of the resinous pines he bore
along with him, the clear manlike look of his eyes and the warm dusky
tan of face and hands--even the effect of the careless, worn boots and
the muscular throat showing through an open shirt-collar--put a
delicious little shiver of excitement into her.

Miss Gloria had a pretty way of commanding, half beseeching and yet
altogether tyrannical. King, having agreed to stay to luncheon, was in
the bathroom off Gaynor's room, shaving. Gloria had caught her father
and dragged him off into a corner. "Oh, papa, he is simply magnificent!
Why didn't you _tell_ me? Why, he isn't a bit old and----" And she made
him repaint for her the high lights of an episode of Mark King making a
name for himself and a fortune at the same time in the Klondike country.
She danced away, singing, to her abandoned friends, who were returning
to the house. "It's _the_ Mark King, my dears!" she told them
triumphantly, not unconscious of the depressing result of her
disclosures upon a couple of boys of the college age who adored openly
and with frequent lapses from glorious hope to bleak despair. "The man
who made history in the Klondike. The man who fought his way alone
across fifteen hundred miles of snow and ice and won--oh--I don't know
_what_ kind of a fight. Against all kinds of odds. The very Mark King!
He's papa's best friend, you know."

"Let him be your dad's friend, then," said the young fellow with the
pampered pompadour, his eyes showing a glint of sullen jealousy. "That's
no reason----"

"Why, Archie!" cried Gloria. "You are making yourself just horrid. You
don't want to make me sorry I ever invited you here, do you?" And a
brief half-hour ago Archie had flattered himself that Gloria's dancing
had been chiefly for him.

They were all of Gloria's "set" with one noteworthy exception. Him she
called "Mr. Gratton" while the others were Archie and Teddy and Georgia
and Evelyn and Connie. It was to this "Mr. Gratton" that she turned,
having made a piquant face at the dejected college youth.

"_You_ will like him immensely, I know," she said, while the ears of
poor Archie reddened even as he was