I'll wager you a box of roses against anything you like
that you had a proposal no later than last week. Perhaps you even came
to New York to escape him."

Considering that Pelgram's studio tea was barely a week in the past,
Helen's face betrayed her confusion.

"_Touche_!" said her host, with a laugh. "Really, I may have to revise
in part my idea of modern young men. After all, they're not blind."

Helen found that time passed quickly during her first few days in New
York. Miss Wardrop was a self-sufficient personage, with a decided
opinion upon everything in heaven and on earth, and a preference no
less decided for that opinion over those held by others. She had,
however, a great fondness for her niece, whom she honored, as she
expressed it, by making not one iota of change in her menage or habits
on account of the presence of her visitor.

"It would be a poor arrangement for both of us if I were to put myself
out for you," she had once explained to the girl. "I would be certain
to regret having done so; and if I did, so would you. So I will pay
you the compliment of going on precisely as though you weren't here."

So she continued to breakfast in bed at the conservative hour of ten
o'clock; continued to superintend the rehabilitation of two rooms on
the second floor which Jenks, to his rheumatic distress, was
redecorating in accordance with the latest whim of his mistress;
continued in all things to order her life exactly as she had ordered it
for twenty years.

It was now the very end of September, and autumn was more than ever in
the air. There was none of the chill ocean breath which in Boston had
already begun to make itself unpleasantly evident, and Helen found the
keenest enjoyment in walking about the city, which heretofore she had
seen principally from the windows of street cars and taxicabs.

It was about three o'clock of a Saturday afternoon at the close of her
second week in New York that she started northward up Fifth Avenue,
casting, as she turned, one backward look at the beauty of the
Washington Arch, white in the sunshine. She herself, after the first
few blocks, took the west side of the avenue, for the afternoon sun was
unexpectedly warm. When she came to Fourteenth Street, she paused to
allow the passage of a number of street cars and other vehicles which
were figuratively champing their bits till the Jove-like person in blue
set them free to move. And as she stood there, she bec