which refused to accept longer
its heretofore placid function of augmenting her physical allurements
with its cleverness and its power of charm. Now it was in insurrection.
Vassal no longer to the sense-thrilling appeal of eyes and lips and
color and delicate curves, it was turning its batteries inward and
preying upon itself.

Self-accusation had come to dispossess self-adulation.

Perhaps the silent voices of the mountains were in part responsible.
Haverly Lodge lay in acres not only smooth, but elaborately beautified,
yet the margins of the estate met and merged with nature's ragged
fringe. Metaled roads ran out in lumber trails where the Adirondacks
reared turrets of granite and primal forests. In summer, ease-loving
guests took their pleasure here, but when winter held the hills, wild
deer came down and gingerly picked their way close to the sundials and
marble basins of the sunken gardens. Foxes, too, stole on cushioned feet
across the terraces at the end of the pergola.

The master of Haverly Lodge was the great little man who chewed always
at an unlighted cigar and built industries as a child rears houses of
blocks. This Adirondack "camp" was one of H.A. Harrison's favorite
playthings. Here alone the nervous restlessness that drove him gave
place to something like peace. Among the guests now gathered there was
Mary Burton. Hamilton Burton was absent, as he was always absent from
the purely social side of the world into whose center he had forced his
way. For such diversions he had neither time nor taste, but like a
general who, under the dim light of his tent lantern, sticks pins into
a war map, it pleased him to have his sister take her triumphant place
among the court idlers whom he scorned.

Now she sat in her room overlooking the terraces and gardens at the side
of the mansion. Just outside her window was a small gallery over whose
wide coping clambered a profusion of flowering vines. Through half-drawn
curtains as she lay in a long reclining chair she could see the purple
veil of the young summer draped along the distance where rosy fires
burned in the wake of day--or she could turn her eyes inward and have
the other picture which the mirror offered. Her slender hands lay
inertly quiet in her lap, holding an envelope.

Suddenly she turned her head and spoke to the only other occupant of the
room--her maid.

"Julie," she said, almost sharply, "you may go. Come back in half an
hour."

"But, mademois