bow, and replied:

"Certainly, m'amselle, if you will give me that pleasure."

And all the roomful stared in mingled astonishment and glee when old
Edouard Dubois, the taciturn and little-liked sheepman from the
"Limestone Rim," led Essie Tisdale out upon the floor to complete a set.

The evening was well along when Dr. Harpe laid her hand upon the
unpainted railing which served as a bannister and turned to look once
more at the roomful of hot, ecstatically happy dancers before she went
upstairs.

"Harpe," she murmured, and her eyes narrowed, "Harpe, we're going to
make good here. We're going to win out. We're going to make money hand
over fist."

And even with her own boastful words there came a pang which had its
source in a knowledge her dance with Symes had brought her. Something
was dead within her! That something was the spirit of youth, and with it
had gone the best of Emma Harpe.

III

A MESALLIANCE

Crowheart was surprised but not shocked when the engagement of Andy P.
Symes to the blacksmith's sister was announced. It saw no mesalliance in
the union. It was merely unaware that he had been attentive to Augusta
Kunkel. Now they were to be married in the long dining-room of the
Terriberry House and take the night train for Chicago on their
honeymoon.

Dr. Harpe standing at the window of her new office on the second floor
of the hotel smiled to herself as she saw the chairs going inside which
served equally well for funerals or for social functions. The match, she
felt, was really of her making.

"You've got to do it," she had told him. "You've simply got to do it."

He had come to see her at Augusta's insistence.

"But!" he had groaned; "a Kunkel! Perhaps you don't know--but I'm one of
the Symes of Maine. Great-grandfather a personal friend of Alexander
Hamilton's, and all that. My family don't expect _much_ of me since I'm
the black sheep, but," a dull red had surged over his face, "they expect
something better of me than a Kunkel!"

She had shrugged her shoulders.

"Suit yourself, I'm only telling you how it looks to me. You'll queer
yourself forever if you don't marry her, for this country is still
western enough to respect women. You are just starting in to promote
this irrigation project and if you succeed you can't tell what the
future will hold for you politically; this is just the sort of thing to
bob up and down you. You know I'm right."

"But she looks so obviously what she