with the quick eyes, or
even her friend, Joyce, choicest flower in a garden of maidens. Nowadays
money would do anything socially.

"Cheekiest beggar I ever saw," fumed Verinder. "Don't see why you let
the fellow stay, Miss Dwight."

The girl's scornful eyes came round to meet his. She had never before
known how cordially she disliked him.

"Don't you?"

She rose and walked quickly into the house.

Verinder bit his mustache angrily. He had been cherishing a fiction that
he was in love with Miss Dwight and more than once he had smarted
beneath the lash of her contempt.

Joyce sank gracefully into the easiest chair and flashed a dazzling
smile at him. "Has Moya been _very_ unkind, Mr. Verinder?"

He had joined the party a few days before at Chicago and this was the
first sign of interest Miss Seldon had shown in him. Verinder was
grateful.

"Dashed if I understand Miss Dwight at all. She blows hot and cold," he
confided in a burst of frankness.

"That's just her way. We all have our moods, don't we? I mean we poor
women. Don't all the poets credit us with inconstancy?" The least
ripple of amusement at her sex swelled in her throat and died away.

"Oh, by Jove, if that's all! I say, do you have moods too, Miss Joyce?"

Her long thick lashes fluttered down to the cheeks. Was she embarrassed
at his question? He felt a sudden lift of the heart, an access of
newborn confidence. Dobyans Verinder had never dared to lift his hopes
as high as the famous beauty Joyce Seldon. Now for the first time his
vanity stirred. Somehow--quite unexpectedly to him--the bars between
them were down. Was it possible that she had taken a fancy to him? His
imagination soared.

For a moment her deep pansy eyes rested in his. He felt a sudden
intoxication of the senses. Almost with a swagger he drew up a chair and
seated himself beside her. Already he was the conquering male in
headlong pursuit. Nor was he disturbed by the least suspicion of having
been filled with the sensations and the impulses that she had contrived.

Miss Seldon had that morning incidentally overheard Lady Farquhar tell
her husband that Dobyans Verinder's fortune must be nearer two million
pounds than one million. It was the first intimation she had been given
that he was such a tremendous catch.

CHAPTER III

NIGHT FISHING

Jack Kilmeny crossed the river by the rope ferry and followed the trail
that ran up. He took the water above the Narrows, about