rprised at the brevity of the interval. Hamilton Burton had evidently
subdued this insurrection in his household with the same whirlwind
swiftness that he employed toward enemies beyond his walls.

Bristoll saw the young financier draw back the portieres and he himself
rose hastily and came forward, but he halted half-way and stood
transfixed. He had been told that he was to expect beauty, and he had
expected it, yet now for the moment he found himself standing
astonished, and as devoid as a raw schoolboy of his usually
imperturbable poise. From this trance-like condition he was recalled by
the quizzical amusement of his employer and, bowing from the hips, he
found himself murmuring some well-bred inanity.

The girl standing there in the door was a sight to make men gasp and
lose their tongues, and because this was not the first who had done so,
her own perfect lips curved into a smile of purest graciousness, and in
her voice as she spoke was a quality of zylophone music made the more
charming by that slight French accent which years abroad had given her.
Beauty is so variant of type, so often vaunted and so rarely found in
true perfectness, that Carl Bristoll had accepted the newspaper reports
of this girl's loveliness with a discounted credence. Now he was
convinced. The quality of her coloring and expression would have made
her face beautiful even had it lacked its allurement of line and
delicacy of proportion; even had the chin tilted less regally and the
eyes looked out under their long lashes with less serene queenliness,
though ready to twinkle at the instant into the merriment of a
mischief-loving child.

She was tall, but not too tall, lithe and slim and sinuous as a mermaid,
yet well enough rounded to make each delicate curve a charm, not merely
of promise but of fulfilment. She wore a flowing morning-gown that made
negligee seem to the suddenly intoxicated secretary the glorified
costume for a woman. It was a richly embroidered thing from China and on
her head was a crown of lace. Bristoll knew that its material name would
be a boudoir cap, but on her head it became a crown--no, it was too
filmy and ethereal for that: rather it was a sort of halo. Beneath it,
and imprisoning pale fire in its amber softness, escaped a truant mass
of curls. From the cap to the foamy whiteness of a lacy petticoat that
peeped out just above the silk-clad ankles, she was exquisite. And all
these things stamped themselves on youn