dressed. What have you been doing?
Something's the matter with you. I know what it is," she added,
laughing, as she seated herself on the edge of the old
black-walnut bed. "You're in love with Wade Trumble!"

"He's a strong man," observed Laura. "A remarkable throat."

"Horrible little person!" said Cora, forgetting what she owed the
unfortunate Mr. Trumble for the vocal wall which had so
effectively sheltered her earlier in the evening. "He's like one
of those booming June-bugs, batting against the walls, falling
into lamp-chimneys-----"

"He doesn't get very near the light he wants," said Laura.

"Me? Yes, he would like to, the rat! But he's consoled when he can
get any one to listen to his awful chatter. He makes up to himself
among women for the way he gets sat on at the club. But he has his
use: he shows off the other men so, by contrast. Oh, Laura!" She
lifted both hands to her cheeks, which were beautiful with a quick
suffusion of high colour. "Isn't he gorgeous!"

"Yes," said Laura gently, "I've always thought so."

"Now what's the use of that?" asked Cora peevishly, "with _me_? I
didn't mean Richard Lindley. You _know_ what I mean."

"Yes--of course--I do," Laura said.

Cora gave her a long look in which a childlike pleading mingled
with a faint, strange trouble; then this glance wandered moodily
from the face of her sister to her own slippers, which she
elevated to meet her descending line of vision.

"And you know I can't help it," she said, shifting quickly to the
role of accuser. "So what's the use of behaving like the Pest?"
She let her feet drop to the floor again, and her voice trembled a
little as she went on: "Laura, you don't know what I had to endure
from him to-night. I really don't think I can stand it to live in
the same house any longer with that frightful little devil. He's
been throwing Ray Vilas's name at me until--oh, it was ghastly
to-night! And then--then----" Her tremulousness increased. "I
haven't said anything about it all day, but I _met_ him on the
street downtown, this morning----"

"You met Vilas?" Laura looked startled. "Did he speak to you?"

"`Speak to me!'" Cora's exclamation shook with a half-laugh of
hysteria. "He made an awful _scene_! He came out of the Richfield
Hotel barroom on Main Street just as I was going into the
jeweller's next door, and he stopped and bowed like a monkey,
square in front of me, and--and he took off his hat and set it on
the pavement at