his head whenever
he tried to engage her in sentimental sotto voce.

Gaiety was left to Prim and the wounded Englishman and to young
Oldershaw and the towering Regina who continually threw back her head
to emit howls of laughter at Barclay's drolleries while she displayed
the large red cavern of her mouth and all her wonderful teeth. After
every one of these exhausting paroxysms she said, with her
characteristic exuberance of sociability, "Isn't he the best thing?"

"Don't you think he's the most fascinating creature?" to any one whose
eye she caught,--a nice, big, beautiful, insincere girl who had been
taught at her fashionable school that in order to succeed in Society
and help things along she must rave about everything in extravagant
language and make as much noise as her lungs would permit.

Joan's unusual lack of spirits was noticed by every one and especially,
with grim satisfaction, by Gilbert Palgrave. With a return of optimism
he told himself that his rudeness expressed so pungently had had its
effect. He congratulated himself upon having, at last, been able to
show Joan the sort of foolish figure that she cut in his sight and even
went so far as to persuade himself that, after all, she must do
something more than like him to be so silent and depressed.

His deductions were, however, as hopelessly wrong as usual. His drastic
criticism had been like water on a duck's back. It inspired amusement
and nothing else. It was his remark that Martin Gray had chucked her
and found some human real person that had stuck, and this, with the
efficiency of a surgeon's knife, had cut her sham complacence and
opened up the old wound from which she had tried so hard to persuade
herself that she had recovered. Martin-Martin-what was he doing? Where
was he, and where was that girl with the white face and the red lips
and the hair that came out of a bottle?

The old overwhelming desire to see Martin again had been unconsciously
set blazing by this tactless and provoked man. It was so passionate and
irresistible that she could hardly remain at the table until the
replete Cornucopia rose, rattling with beads. And when, after what
seemed to be an interminable time, this happened and the party
adjourned to the shaded veranda to smoke and catch the faint breeze
from the sea, she instantly beckoned to Harry and made for the
drawing-room.

In this furniture be-clogged room all the windows were open, but the
blazing sun of the morn