ne. Dan glanced from her to the young people at a
neighboring table. Among the girls in the party none was prettier or
more charmingly gowned than Marian. In the light of this proximity he
watched her with a new attention, and he saw that her father, too,
studied her covertly, as though realizing that he had a grown daughter
on his hands. Her way with Harwood was not without coquetry; she tapped
his arm with her fan lightly when he refused to enter into a discussion
of his attentions, of which she protested she knew much, to Miss
Bosworth. He admitted having called on Miss Bosworth once; her brother
was a Yale man, and had asked him to the house on the score of that tie;
but Marian knew much better. She was sure that he was devoting himself
to Miss Bosworth; every one said that he was becoming a great society
man.

She had wearied of his big-brother attitude toward her. Except the
callow youth of Fraserville and the boys she had known all the summers
of her life at Waupegan, Harwood and Allen Thatcher were the only young
men she knew. In her later freedom at school she had made the office
telephone a nuisance to him, but he sympathized with her discreetly in
her perplexities. Several times she had appealed to him to help her out
of financial difficulties, confiding to him tragically that if certain
bills reached Fraserville she would be ruined forever.

Marian found the Country Club highly diverting; it gave her visions of
the social life of the capital of which she had only vaguely dreamed.
She knew many people by sight who were socially prominent, and she
longed to be of their number. It pleased her to find that her father,
who was a non-resident member and a rare visitor at the club, attracted
a good deal of attention; she liked to think him a celebrity. The
Speaker of the House in the last session of the general assembly came
out and asked Bassett to meet some men with whom he had been dining in
the rathskeller; while her father was away, Marian, with elbows resting
on the table, her firm, round chin touching her lightly interlaced
fingers, gave a capital imitation of a girl making herself agreeable to
a young man. Dan was well hardened to her cajoleries by this time; he
was confident that she would have made "sweet eyes at Caliban." Harwood,
smoking the cigar Bassett had ordered for him, compared favorably with
other young men who had dawned upon Marian's horizon. Like most Western
boys who go East to college, he