ife so becoming as that old red blouse. So farewell, Katy, we're
due to burst into high society tonight. We're going to help Eileen vamp
a lawyer, and an author, and an architect, one apiece. Which do you
prefer, Marian?"

"I'll take the architect," said Marian. "We should have something in
common since I am going to be a great architect myself one of these
days."

"Why, that is too bad," said Linda. "I'll have to rearrange the table if
you insist, because I took him, and left you the author, and it was for
love of you I did it. I truly wanted him myself, all the time."

They stopped in the dining room and Marian praised Linda's work in
laying the table; and then, together they entered the living room.

At the moment of their entrance, Eileen was talking animatedly about the
beauties of the valley as a location for a happy home. When she saw the
two girls she paused, the color swiftly faded from her face, and Linda,
who was watching to see what would happen, noticed the effort she made
at self-control, but she was very sure that their guests did not.

It never occurred to Linda that anyone would consider good looks in
connection with her overgrown, rawboned frame and lean face, but she was
accustomed to seeing people admire Marian, for Marian was a perfectly
modeled woman with peach bloom cheeks, deep, dark eyes, her face framed
in a waving mass of hair whose whiteness dated from the day that the
brakes of her car failed and she plunged down the mountain with her
father beside her, and her mother and Doctor and Mrs. Strong in the back
seat. Ten days afterward Marian's head of beautiful dark hair was muslin
white. Now it framed a face of youth and beauty with peculiar pathos.
"Striking" was perhaps the one adjective which would best describe her.

John Gilman came hastily to greet them. Linda, after a swift glance
at Eileen, turned astonished eyes on their guests. For one second
she looked at the elder of them, then at the younger. There was no
recognition in her eyes, and there was a decided negative in a swift
movement of her head. Both men understood that she did not wish them to
mention that they ever had seen her previously. For an instant there
was a strained situation. Eileen was white with anger. John Gilman was
looking straight at Marian, and in his soul he must have wondered if
he had been wise in neglecting her for Eileen. Peter Morrison and his
architect, Henry Anderson, had two things to think about. On