rd,
for I am interested in so many things myself."

"I can arrange all that," Jack said, in an off-hand way. Carmen's look
of gratitude could hardly be distinguished from affection. "That's easy
enough. We are just as good friends as ever, though I fancy she doesn't
altogether approve of me lately. It's rather nice for a fellow, Mrs.
Henderson, to have a lot of women keeping him straight, isn't it?" asked
Jack, in the tone of a bad boy.

"Yes. Between us all we will make a model of you. I am so glad now that
I told you."

Jack protested that it was nothing. Why shouldn't friends help each
other? Why not, indeed, said Carmen, and the talk went on a good deal
about friendship, and the possibility of it between a man and a woman.
This sort of talk is considered serious and even deep, not to say
philosophic. Carmen was a great philosopher in it. She didn't know, but
she believed, it seemed natural, that every woman should have one man
friend. Jack rose to go.

"So soon?" And it did seem pathetically soon. She gave him her hand, and
then by an impulse she put her left hand over his, and looked up to him
in quite a business way.

"Mr. Delancy, don't you be troubled about that rumor we were speaking
of. It will be all right. Trust me."

He understood perfectly, and expressed both his understanding and his
gratitude by bending over and kissing the little hand that lay in his.

When he had gone, Carmen sat a long time by the fire reflecting. It
would be sweet to humiliate the Delancy and Schuyler Blunt set, as
Henderson could. But what would she gain by that? It would be sweeter
still to put them under obligations, and profit by that. She had endured
a good many social rebuffs in her day, this tolerant little woman, and
the sting of their memory could only be removed when the people who had
ignored her had to seek social favors she could give. If Henderson only
cared as much for such things as she did! But he was at times actually
brutal about it. He seemed to have only one passion. She herself liked
money, but only for what it would bring. Henderson was like an old
Pharaoh, who was bound to build the biggest pyramid ever built to his
memory; he hated to waste a block. But what was the good of that when
one had passed beyond the reach of envy?

Revolving these deep things in her mind, she went to her dressing-room
and made an elaborate toilet for dinner. Yet it was elaborately simple.
That sort needed more study than t