ound her head,
and the new maid had managed to soften the severity of the style and
so heightened its effectiveness. A small string of black pearls was
around her throat, and pendants of the same beautiful jewels hung
from her ears. Berkeley Hayden started, and his eyes widened. Mrs.
Vandervelde, who had been watching him intently, sighed
imperceptibly.

"I wasn't mistaken, then," she thought, and smiled to herself.

She could have hugged Anne Champneys for her beautifully
unconscious manner. Of course the girl didn't understand she was
being signally honored and favored by Hayden's openly interested
notice, but Marcia reflected amusedly that it wouldn't have made
much difference if Anne had known. He didn't interest her, except
casually and impersonally. She thought him a very good-looking
man, in his way, but rather old: say all of thirty:--and Glenn
Mitchell had been handsome, and romantic, and twenty. Young Mrs.
Champneys, then, didn't respond to Mr. Berkeley Hayden's notice
gratefully, pleasedly, flutteringly, as other young women--and
many older ones--did. This one paid a more flattering attention to
Mr. Jason Vandervelde than to him. But he had seen other women
play that game; he wondered for a moment if this one were
designing. But he was himself too clever not to understand that
this was real indifference. Then he wondered if she might
be--horrible thought!--stupid. He was forced to dismiss that
suspicion, too. She wasn't stupid. The truth didn't occur to
him--that he himself was spoiled. It provoked him, too, that he
couldn't make her talk.

Mrs. Vandervelde smiled to herself again. Berkeley was deliberately
trying to make himself agreeable, something he did not often have to
trouble himself to do. He was at his best only when he was really
interested or amused, and he was at his best to-night. He aroused
her admiration, drew the fire of her own wit and raillery, stung
even quiet Jason into unwonted animation. Anne Champneys looked
from one to the other, concealing the fact that at times their
conversation was over her head. She didn't always understand them.
The sense of their unreality in relation to herself came upon her.
She turned to watch this strange man who was saying things that
puzzled her, and he met her eyes, as Glenn Mitchell had once met
them. She wasn't looking at him as she had looked at Glenn, but
Berkeley Hayden's sophisticated, well-trained, wary heart gave an
unprecedented, unmannerly