piccolo sounded above the other tortured instruments, no
violin wailed pitifully at its inhuman treatment, and the piano was
locked.

At seasonable hours the key might be had at the office by those who
could prove themselves worthy of the trust, but otherwise quiet reigned.

[Sidenote: Eloise Wynne]

Miss Eloise Wynne came downstairs, with a book under her arm. She was
fresh as the morning itself and as full of exuberant vitality. She was
tall and straight and strong; her copper-coloured hair shone as though
it had been burnished, and her tanned cheeks had a tint of rose. When
she entered the dining-room, with a cheery "good-morning" that included
everybody, she produced precisely the effect of a cool breeze from the
sea.

She was thirty, and cheerfully admitted it on occasion. "If I don't look
it," she said, smiling, "people will be surprised, and if I do, there
would be no use in denying it. Anyhow, I'm old enough to go about
alone." It was her wont to settle herself for Summer or Winter in any
place she chose, with no chaperon in sight.

For a week she had been at Riverdale-by-the-Sea, and liked it on account
of the lack of entertainment. People who lived there called it simply
"Riverdale," but the manager of the hotel, perhaps to atone for the
missing orchestra and canned vegetables, added "by-the-Sea" to the name
in his modest advertisements.

Miss Wynne, fortunately, had enough money to enable her to live the
much-talked-of "simple life," which is wildly impossible to the poor.
As it was not necessary for her to concern herself with the sordid and
material, she could occupy herself with the finer things of the soul.
Just now, however, she was deeply interested in the material foundation
of the finest thing in the world--a home.

[Sidenote: A Passion for Lists]

She had taken the bizarre paper slip which protected the even more
striking cover of a recent popular novel, and adjusted it to a bulky
volume of very different character. In her chatelaine bag she had a
pencil and a note-book, for Miss Eloise was sorely afflicted with the
note-book habit, and had a passion for reducing everything to lists. She
had lists of things she wanted and lists of things she didn't want,
which circumstances or well-meaning Santa Clauses had forced upon her;
little books of addresses and telephone numbers, jewels and other
personal belongings, and, finally, a catalogue of her library
alphabetically arranged by author and ti