to
permit the affectionate familiarity of first names? He had from the
beginning believed that Ydo had some interest in the property, although
he had never been able satisfactorily to guess the nature of it. But
Marcia! The mere possibility of her being interested in what Ydo merrily
called his Eldorado had never struck him before, and his brain was
bewildered by the thousand new trains of conjecture it started.

At this point his reflections were broken in upon by the entrance of
Marcia herself. She was all in white with the big, ruby-eyed butterfly on
her bosom, and the chain of butterflies about her throat. She looked more
radiant than he had ever seen her as she stood before them drawing on her
long gloves. Her eyes, no longer sad with all regret, were like deep blue
stars, and her smile was full of a soft and girlish happiness.

"You look very well, Marcia," said her mother critically. "A new gown, of
course. How differently they are cutting the skirts!"

"It's a lovely gown," affirmed Hayden, smiling down into Marcia's eyes.
"After all, a simple white frock is the prettiest thing a woman can
wear."

"Simple!" Mrs. Oldham's mirth was high and satiric. "Isn't that like a
man? Simple is the last word to be applied to Marcia's frocks, Mr.
Hayden. It's a good thing, as I often tell her, that her father left us
so well provided for."

The lovely happiness vanished from Marcia's eyes. She looked quickly at
her mother with an almost frightened expression, and then, with eyelashes
lowered on her cheek, went silently on drawing on her gloves, two or
three tense little lines showing about her mouth.

"I think Miss Oldham is very unkind," said Hayden, with some idea of
bridging the situation gracefully, "never to have shown me any of her
pictures. She paints, paints all day long, and yet will not give one a
glimpse of the results. Kitty Hampton has been promising to show me some
of the water-colors she has, but she has not yet done so."

"Have you been talking much to Mr. Hayden of your pictures, Marcia?"
asked her mother suavely.

The tone was pleasant, even casual, and yet, Hayden, sensitive,
intuitive, had a quick, shocked sense of having blundered egregiously;
and worse, he had a further sense of Mrs. Oldham's words being fraught
with some ugly and hidden meaning. In her voice there had been manifest
an unsuspected quality which had revealed her for the moment as not all
frivolous fool or spoiled and empty-heade