hem for the minutes she spent with him,
but he could see her go back to them and make no attempt to follow her
in sympathy.

But he loved her beauty. There was that palliating fact. After all,
Rosie was a woman, and here was the supreme tribute to her womanhood. It
was not everything, and yet it was the thing enchanting. It was the kind
of tribute any woman in the world would have put before social rescue or
moral elevation, and Rosie was like the rest. She could be lulled by
Claude's endearments as a child is lulled by a cradle-song. With this
music in her ears doubts were stilled and misgivings quieted and
ambitions overruled. Return to the world of care and calculation
followed only on Claude's words uttered just as they were parting.

"And you'd better be on your guard against Thor. So long as he's going
to your house you mustn't give anything away."

CHAPTER VIII

Dressed for going out, Mrs. Willoughby was buttoning her gloves as she
stood in the square hall hung with tapestries of a late Gobelins period
and adorned with a cabinet in the style of Buhl flanked by two
decorative Regency chairs. Her gaze followed the action of her fingers
or wandered now and then inquiringly up the stairway.

Her broad, low figure, wide about the hips, tapered toward the feet in
lines suggestive of a spinning-top. She was proud of her feet, which
were small and shapely, and approved of a fashion in skirts that
permitted them to be displayed. Being less proud of her eyes, she also
approved of a style of hat which allowed the low, sloping brim, worn
slantwise across the brows, to conceal one of them.

"You're surely not going in that rag!"

The protest was called forth by Lois's appearance in a walking-costume
on the stairs.

"But, mamma, I'm not going at all. I told you so."

"Told me so! What's the good of telling me so? There'll be loads of men
there--simply loads. Goodness me! Lois, if you're ever going to know any
men at all--"

"I know all the men I want to know."

"You don't know all the men you want to know, and if you do I should be
ashamed to say it. A girl who's had all your advantages and doesn't make
more show! What on earth are you doing that you don't want to come?"

Lois hesitated, but she was too frank for concealments. "I'm going to
see a girl Thor Masterman wants me to look after. He thinks I may be
able to help her."

The mother subsided. "Oh, well--if it's that!" She added, so as not to
seem