don't believe you've ever seen any one else half as
lovely and lovable."

"Local pride carries you far, Lady Jeannette," laughed Hal.

"And I _had_ intended to have her here to dine to-morrow; but as you're
so indifferent--"

"Oh, don't leave her out on my account," said Hal magnanimously.

"I believe you're more than half in love with her already."

"Well, you ought to be a good judge unless you've wholly forgotten the
old days," retorted Hal audaciously.

Jeannette Willard laughed up at him. "Don't try to flirt with a
middle-aged lady who is most old-fashionedly in love with her husband,"
she advised. "Keep your bravo speeches for Esme! She's used to them."

"Rather goes in for that sort of thing, doesn't she?"

"You mean flirtation? Someone's been talking to you about her," said
Mrs. Willard quickly. "What did they say?"

"Nothing in particular. I just gathered the impression."

"Don't jump to any conclusions about Esme," advised his friend. "Most
men think her a desperate flirt. She does like attention and admiration.
What woman doesn't? And Esme is very much a woman."

"Evidently!"

"If she seems heartless, it's because she doesn't understand. She enjoys
her own power without comprehending it. Esme has never been really
interested in any man. If she had ever been hurt, herself, she would be
more careful about hurting others. Yet the very men who have been
hardest hit remain her loyal friends."

"A tribute to her strategy."

"A finer quality than that. It is her own loyalty, I think, that makes
others loyal to her. But the men here aren't up to her standard. She is
complex, and she is ambitious, without knowing it. Fine and clean as our
Worthington boys are, there isn't one of them who could appeal to the
imagination and idealism of a girl like Esme Elliot. For Esme, under all
that lightness, is an idealist; the idealist who hasn't found her
ideal."

"And therefore hasn't found herself."

She flashed a glance of inquiry and appraisal at him. "That's rather
subtle of you," she said. "I hope you don't know _too_ much about women,
Hal."

"Not I! Just a shot in the dark."

"I said there wasn't a man here up to her standard. That isn't quite
true. There is one,--you met him to-night,--but he has troubles of his
own, elsewhere," she added, smiling. "I had hoped--but there has always
been a friendship too strong for the other kind of sentiment between him
and Esme."

"For a guess, that might be Dr