ame back, also, all the old-time charm of her
siren voice, her keen wit, her polished sarcasms, her devil-may-care
_bon camaraderie_.

For two years Ethel Sherman had been a daily thorn in Winn's side. He
had met her occasionally, when he simply bowed and exchanged the
civilities of polite society, but nothing more. Occasionally his aunt, a
born match-maker, had let fall a word of praise for Ethel, the intent of
which was palpable to Winn, but in spite of which he had determined to
put her out of his thoughts. When her letter reached him on the island,
he mentally contrasted her with Mona and to the former's detriment, more
than ever thinking of her as the type of a fashionable young woman
sneered at by Nickerson. His illusions regarding her had all vanished
and he saw her as she was,--a beautiful, heartless, ambitious Circe,
conscious of her power, and enjoying it.

And this evening, seated in her daintily furnished parlor, and facing
the most exquisite adornment it contained, he regarded her as he did the
marble copy of the Greek Slave, perched on a pedestal in one corner.

But Ethel Sherman was not the girl to be long considered marble, whether
she was or not; and was just now piqued by Winn's coolly polite
indifference.

"Well, my dear friend," she said eagerly, when the first commonplaces
had been exchanged, "tell me all about this unheard-of island where you
have been buried all summer, and this queer old fellow you brought up
in the city, and the barefooted fisher maids you met there, and which
one caught your fancy. I've just been dying to hear."

"You seem to want an entire chapter of a novel in one breath," answered
Winn, smiling. "How did you find out I brought any one to the city?"

"Oh, I am still able to read the papers," she laughed, "and Jack called
the other evening. It's all over the city, as well as your firm's
collapse and the part you played in it. Oh, you have become famous in a
day, as it were, and people who have never set eyes on you are talking
about you."

Winn smiled, for what man could resist such subtile flattery.

"I wasn't aware that I was a mark for gossip," he said, "though Weston &
Hill must have been, and deservedly. I'm not sorry for Hill, however,
for I despised him, but I rather liked Weston, even after I discovered
he was a rascal, he was such a jolly, good-natured one."

"So Jack says," answered Ethel, "and happily indifferent as to whom he
swindled. It was first come,