one hundred and thirty pounds, did not think herself
down of thistles.

"Are you hurt?" asked Richard, still holding her lightly close.

Richard looked at the girl; black hair, white skin, lashes of ink, eyes
of blue, rose-leaf lips, teeth white as rice, a spot of red in her
cheeks--the last the fruit of fright, no doubt. He had never seen aught
so beautiful! Even while she was in his arms, the face fitted into his
heart like a picture into its frame, and Richard thought on that prophet
of Calicut.

"Are you injured?" he asked again.

"Thanks to you--no," said the girl.

With a kind of modest energy, she took herself out of his arms, for
Richard had held to her stoutly, and might have been holding her until
now had she not come to her own rescue. For all that, she had leisure to
admire the steel-like grasp and the deep, even voice. Her own words as
she replied came in gasps.

"No," she repeated, "I'm not injured. Help me to a seat."

The beautiful rescued one limped, and Richard turned white.

"Your ankle!" he exclaimed.

"No; my heel," she retorted with a little flutter of a laugh. "My French
heel caught on the stair; it was torn away. No wonder I limp!"

Then came the girl's mother and called her "Dorothy."

Richard, who was not without presence of mind, climbed six steps and
secretly made prize of the baby boot-heel. Perhaps you will think he did
this on the argument by which an Indian takes a scalp. Whatever the
argument, he placed the sweet trophy over that heart which held the
picture of the girl; once there, the boot-heel showed bulgingly foolish
through his coat.

Richard returned to the mother and daughter; the latter had regained her
poise. He introduced himself: "Mr. Richard Storms." The mother gave him
her card: "Mrs. John Harley." She added:

"My name is Hanway-Harley, and this is my daughter, Dorothy Harley.
Hanway is my own family name; I always use it." Then she thanked Richard
for his saving interference in her child's destinies. "Just to think!"
she concluded, and a curdling horror gathered in her tones. "Dorothy,
you might have broken your nose!"

Richard ran a glance over Mrs. Hanway-Harley. She was not coarse, but
was superficial--a woman of inferior ideals. He marveled how a being so
fine as the daughter could have had a no more silken source, and hugged
the boot-heel. The daughter was a flower, the mother a weed. He decided
that the superiority of Dorothy was due to the father, a