er most becoming
and attractive gowns. To Linda and Katy during the dinner she was simply
charming. Having said what she wanted to say and received the assurance
she desired, Linda accepted her advances cordially and displayed such
charming proclivities herself that Eileen began covertly to watch her,
and as she watched there slowly grew in her brain the conviction that
something had happened to Linda. At once she began studying deeply in an
effort to learn what it might be. There were three paramount things
in Eileen's cosmos that could happen to a girl: She could have lovely
clothing. Linda did not have it. She could have money and influential
friends. Since Marian's going Linda had practically no friend; she was
merely acquainted with almost everyone living in Lilac Valley. She could
have a lover. Linda had none. But stay! Eileen's thought halted at the
suggestion. Maybe she had! She had been left completely, to her own
devices when she was not wanted about the house. She had been mingling
with hundreds of boys and girls in high school. She might have met some
man repeatedly on the street cars, going to and from school. In school
she might have attracted the son of some wealthy and influential family;
which was the only kind of son Eileen chose to consider in connection
with Linda. Through Eileen's brain ran bits of the conversation of the
previous evening. She recalled that the men she had intended should
spend the evening waiting on her and paying her pretty compliments had
spent it eating like hungry men, laughing and jesting with Linda and
Marian, giving every evidence of a satisfaction with their entertainment
that never had been evinced with the best brand of attractions she had
to offer.

Eileen was willing to concede that Marian Thorne had been a beautiful
girl, and she had known, previous to the disaster, that it was quite as
likely that any man might admire Marian's flashing dark beauty as
her blonde loveliness. Between them then it would have been merely a
question of taste on the part of the man. Since Marian's dark head had
turned ashen, Eileen had simply eliminated her at one sweep. That white
hair would brand Marian anywhere as an old woman. Very likely no man
ever would want to marry her. Eileen was sure she would not want to if
she were a man. No wonder John Gilman had ceased to be attracted by a
girl's face with a grandmother setting.

As for Linda, Eileen never had considered her at all except as