began talking the moment she sat down at the
table, but somehow she could not put Pink out of her mind. She kept
seeing him as he had stood there at the gate in the snow with the young
moon lighting it up. She knew that he had stood and watched her pass up
the path and into the house, for she had stolen a hasty glance over her
shoulder as she opened the door, and the tall, dark figure was still
there.

She talked vivaciously of many things: of little Don's pleasure in her
gift, of her fall on the ice on the way over, of Sara Downs' Valentine
party, of Phil's letter. When the last subject was mentioned Mrs. Ware
remarked, "That snap-shot of 'Eloise' shows her to be a very pretty
girl, I think."

"Snap-shot of Eloise!" echoed Mary blankly. "I didn't see it. Where is
it?"

"In the envelope. I didn't see it either, until I started to shove the
folded sheet back into it. Something inside prevented its going more
than half way, and I found it was the little unmounted picture curled up
inside. It's on the mantel. Norman, get it for your sister, please."

Mary held the picture under the lamp for a careful scrutiny. So that was
Eloise. A slim, graceful girl posing in a hammock, with one hand resting
on the guitar in her lap, the other on the head of Senor Tremonti. Her face
was in shadow, but she looked dangerously attractive to Mary, who spoke
her opinion openly.

"She's an appealing little thing, the clinging-vine sort. If Phil saw
her only in the daylight and called her plain Eliza, and could remember
that she's a little 'fraid cat whose chief interest in life is frills
and fetching furbelows, he wouldn't be in any danger. But you see, he
hasn't any of his kind of girls down there--I mean like the Little
Colonel and Betty and Gay, and the moonlight and musical evenings will
give her a sort of glamor that'll make her seem different, just as
calling her Eloise makes her seem more romantic than when he says
Eliza."

"Don't you worry," laughed Jack. "Phil is old enough to look out for
himself, and to know what he wants. You can trust him to pick out the
kind of wife that suits him, better than you could do it for him."

"But I don't want him to be satisfied with that kind after all the
lovely girls he's known," grumbled Mary, putting the picture aside and
going on with her supper. Her motherly concern was even greater over
this situation than it had been when she thought of him as "doomed to
carry a secret sorrow to his