the house. Stella had
met Linda Abbey once, reluctantly, under the circumstances, but it was
different now--with the difference that money makes. She could play
hostess against an effective background, and she did so graciously. Nor
was her graciousness wholly assumed. After all, they were her kind of
people: Linda, fair-haired, perfectly gowned, perfectly mannered,
sweetly pretty; Mrs. Abbey, forty-odd and looking thirty-five, with that
calm self-assurance which wealth and position confer upon those who hold
it securely. Stella found them altogether to her liking. It pleased her,
too, that Jack happened in to meet them. He was not a scintillating
talker, yet she had noticed that when he had anything to say, he never
failed to attract and hold attention. His quiet, impersonal manner never
suggested stolidness. And she was too keen an observer to overlook the
fact that from a purely physical standpoint Jack Fyfe made an
impression always, particularly on women. Throughout that winter it had
not disturbed her. It did not disturb her now, when she noticed Linda
Abbey's gaze coming back to him with a veiled appraisal in her blue eyes
that were so like Fyfe's own in their tendency to twinkle and gleam with
no corresponding play of features.

"We'll expect to see a good deal of you this summer," Mrs. Abbey said
cordially at leave-taking. "We have a few people up from town now and
then to vary the monotony of feasting our souls on scenery. Sometimes we
are quite a jolly crowd. Don't be formal. Drop in when you feel the
inclination."

When Stella reminded Jack of this some time later, in a moment of
boredom, he put the _Panther_ at her disposal for the afternoon. But he
would not go himself. He had opened up a new outlying camp, and he had
directions to issue, work to lay out.

"You hold up the social end of the game," he laughed. "I'll hustle
logs."

So Stella invaded the Abbey-Monohan precincts by herself and enjoyed
it--for she met a houseful of young people from the coast, and in that
light-hearted company she forgot for the time being that she was married
and the responsible mistress of a house. Paul Abbey was there, but he
had apparently forgotten or forgiven the blow she had once dealt his
vanity. Paul, she reflected, was not the sort to mourn a lost love long.

She had the amused experience too of beholding Charlie Benton appear an
hour or so before she departed and straightway monopolize Linda Abbey in
his charac