nt
position in the household. From her post of observation the wise one
found herself looking on with a smile sometimes, there was such a
freshness in her style of enacting the _role_ of beauty. She struck
Phil's friends dumb now and then with her conscious power, and the
unhappy Brown suffered himself to be led captive without a struggle.

"Her 'prentice han' she tried on Brown," Dolly had said, months before,
in a wretched attempt at parody; and certainly the tortures of Brown
were prolonged and varied. But it was her manner toward Chandos that
puzzled Aimee. Perhaps she was a trifle proud of his evident
admiration; at all events, she seemed far from averse to it, and the
incomprehensible part of the affair was that sometimes she allowed him
to rival even Ralph Gowan.

"And yet," commented Aimee, "she likes Ralph Gowan better. She never can
help blushing and looking conscious when he comes or when he talks to
her, and she is as cool as Dolly when she finds herself with Chandos. It
is very odd."

It was not so easy to manage her as it used to be, Ralph Gowan
discovered. She was growing capricious and fanciful, and ready to take
offence. If they were left alone together, she would change her mood
every two minutes. Sometimes she would submit to his old jesting,
gallant speeches quite humbly and shyly for a while, and then she would
flame out all at once in anger, half a woman's and half a child's. He
was inclined to fancy now and then that she had never forgiven him for
his first interference on the subject of Gerald Chandos, for at the
early part of the acquaintance he did interfere, as he had promised
Dolly he would.

"I am not glad to see that fellow here, Mollie," he had said, the first
night he met him at the house.

She stood erect before him, with her white throat straight, and a spark
in her eyes.

"What fellow?" she asked.

"Chandos," he answered, coolly and briefly.

"Oh!" she returned. "How is it that when one man dislikes another he
always speaks of him as 'that fellow'? I know some one who always refers
to you as 'that fellow.'"

"Do you?" dryly, as before. He knew very well whom she meant.

"_I_ am glad to see 'that fellow' here," she went on. "He is a
gentleman, and he is n't stupid. No one else comes here who is so
amusing. I am tired of Brown & Company."

"Ah!" he answered, biting his lip. He felt the rebuff, if it was
only Mollie who gave it. "Very well then, if you are tired of Brown &