our country and I thought I'd write and give you a
hint in case you come across him. Grab him, my dear, if you have the
ghost of a show, for he is the most eligible man in seven states.
Money, family, social position--it makes me green to think of your
chance, it's the chance of a lifetime--for I'd never meet him in my
humble sphere in a thousand years. He's an awfully decent sort, too,
they say. He overworked after he came out of college and he's there
getting his health back. Good luck to you and I hope you appreciate
my tip.

Lovingly,
ADELE

Dr. Harpe folded the letter and put it away.

"Don't I though?" she said grimly.

She frowned as Van Lennop's low, amused laugh, mingling with Essie
Tisdale's merry trill, reached her through the open window.

"The presumptuous little upstart! The biscuit-shooter!" Dr. Harpe's face
was not pleasant to see.

She took care to keep to herself what she had learned for when they met,
as she was now determined that they should, she wished the friendship
she meant to proffer to seem above all else disinterested. While she
realized that she had his prejudice to overcome, she believed that she
could overcome it and she would wait now with eagerness for the
opportunity to insert the opening wedge.

Heretofore the dubious compliment "a good fellow," from the men with
whom she smoked and drank, had pleased and satisfied her. She had no
desire to appeal to them in any other way; but this was different
because Ogden Van Lennop was different, being the first really eligible
man who had ever come within the circle to which she had been limited by
her always straitened circumstances. She looked upon Van Lennop in the
light of an exceptional business chance, and with a conceit oddly at
variance with her eminently practical nature, she believed she had only
to set about exerting herself in earnest to arouse his interest and
attach him to herself.

Van Lennop found himself still smiling at Essie Tisdale's sallies as he
came up the stairs. Her droll originality amused him as he had not been
amused in a long time, and he found himself unbending to a degree which
often surprised himself; besides, with her frankness, her naturalness
and perfect unconsciousness of any social barrier, she seemed to him a
perfect western type. He prized the novel friendship, for it had become
that, and would have regretted keenly anything which might have
interrupted it.