wedding journey.

And the world knew more than these things concerning Marjorie Schuyler. It knew that she was beautiful, of regal bearing and distinguished manner. An aunt lived with her, to lend dignity and chaperonage to her position; but she managed her own affairs, social and financial, for herself. If the world had been asked to choose a modern prototype for the young, independent American girl of the leisure class, it is reasonably safe to assume it would have named Marjorie Schuyler.

As for young Burgeman, the world knew him as the Rich Man’s Son. That was the best and worst it could say of him.

“I think, Toto,” said Marjorie Schuyler to her toy ruby spaniel, “it will be June. There is only one thing you can do with October—a church wedding, chrysanthemums, and oak leaves. But June offers so many possible variations. Besides, that gives us both one last, untrammeled season in town. Yes, June it is; and we’ll not have to [Pg 14]think about these yet awhile.” Whereupon she dropped the shimmering samples into the waste-basket.

[Pg 14]

A maid pushed aside the hangings that curtained her den from the great Schuyler library. “There’s a young person giving the name of O’Connell, asking to see you. Shall I say you are out?”

“O’Connell?” Marjorie Schuyler raised a pair of interrogatory eyebrows. “Why—it can’t be. The entire company went back weeks ago. What is she like—small and brown, with very pink cheeks and very blue eyes?”

The maid nodded ambiguously.

“Bring her up. I know it can’t be, but—”

But it was. The next moment Marjorie Schuyler was taking a firm grip of Patsy’s shoulders while she looked down with mock disapproval at the girl who reached barely to her shoulder.

“Patsy O’Connell! Why didn’t you go home with the others—and what have you done to your cheeks?”

Patsy attacked them with two merciless fists. “Sure, they’re after needing a pinch of north-of-Ireland wind, that’s all. How’s yourself?”

Marjorie Schuyler pushed her gently into a great chair, while she herself took a carved baronial seat opposite. The nearness of anything so exquisitely perfect as Marjorie Schuyler, and the [Pg 15]comparison it was bound to suggest, would have been a conscious ordeal for almost any other 

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