ndless and rustleless
movements."

"Oh, absurd!" she cried, the very tips of her ears red. Hayden might well
exult in his ability to make her blush. "How you do romance! The whole
situation was an absolutely simple one. Old Mr.----" He fancied she
caught her breath sharply, but if it were so she recovered herself
immediately and went on: "The man with whom I was dining--I had to see
him that evening. He was leaving town. I was leaving him at the station
when I bowed to you and Mr. Penfield from the motor, and, as I was
saying, I had to see him before he left on a--a business matter, and
naturally, it was much easier to talk it over with him at the
Gildersleeve than any place else."

She smiled as she finished, and Hayden saw more in that smile than she
intended or desired he should. It was in itself a full period, definitely
closing the subject. It also held resentment, annoyance that she had
permitted herself to fall into so egregious a blunder as an explanation.

"Oh, how I love a winter evening like this!" she went on hurriedly. "Once
in a while, they stray into the heart of winter from the sun-warmed
autumn, and they get so cold, poor little waifs from Indian Summer, that
they wrap themselves in all the clouds and mists they can find. Ah, isn't
it soft and dim and sweet and mysterious? The wind sings such an eerie
little song, and the tiny, pale crescent moon is just rising. Look, it
has a ring about it! It will rain to-morrow. Oh, dear!"

They had left the Park a few minutes before and turned in the direction
of Riverside Drive, and a short walk brought them to the home in which
Marcia's father had installed his family a few months before the crash
came and his subsequent death. It was a handsome house, within as well as
without; dark, stately, and sumptuous in effect. The sound of voices and
laughter reached their ears as they ascended the stairs, and when they
entered the drawing-room they found a number of people there before them.

There was Kitty looking more than ever like a charming, if not very good
little boy, and dressed beautifully, if incongruously, in a trailing limp
gown of champagne color and wistaria most wonderfully blended, when her
face, her figure, the way she wore her hair, seemed to cry aloud for
knickerbockers; and there was Bea Habersham in velvet, of the cerise
shade she so much affected, and Edith Symmes suggesting nothing so much
as a distinguished but malevolent fairy, her keen, sati