mailing to New York. She hurried from her last class that afternoon
to the city directory to find the street and number of James Brothers,
figuring that the firm with whom Marian dealt would be the proper people
for her to consult. She had no difficulty in finding the place for which
she was searching, and she was rather agreeably impressed with the men
to whom she talked. She made arrangements with their buyer to call at
her home in Lilac Valley at nine o'clock the following Saturday morning
to appraise the articles with which she wished to part.

Then she went to one of the leading book stores of the city and made
inquiries which guided her to a reliable second-hand book dealer, and
she arranged to be ready to receive his representative at ten o'clock on
Saturday.

Reaching home she took a note book and pencil, and studied the billiard
room and the library, making a list of the furniture which she did not
actually need. After that she began on the library shelves, listing such
medical works as were of a technical nature. Books of fiction, history,
art, and biography, and those books written by her father she did not
include. She found that she had a long task which would occupy several
evenings. Her mind was methodical and she had been with her father
through sufficient business transactions to understand that in order to
drive a good bargain she must know how many volumes she had to offer and
the importance of their authors as medical authorities; she should also
know the exact condition of each set of books. Since she had made up
her mind to let them go, and she knew the value of many of the big,
leather-bound volumes, she determined that she would not sell them until
she could secure the highest possible price for them.

Two months previously she would have consulted John Gilman and asked him
to arrange the transaction for her. Since he had allowed himself to be
duped so easily--or at least it had seemed easy to Linda; for, much
as she knew of Eileen, she could not possibly know the weeks of secret
plotting, the plans for unexpected meetings, the trumped-up business
problems necessary to discuss, the deliberate flaunting of her physical
charms before him, all of which had made his conquest extremely hard
for Eileen, but Linda, seeing only results, had thought it contemptibly
easy--she would not ask John Gilman anything. She would go ahead on the
basis of her agreement with Eileen and do the best she could alone.