his vivid imagination pictured “some nice girl” there waiting, as they should come up, to meet him. 

 “I have always thought it would be bully to find a poor girl—pretty as a peach, of course—one who had never had much, and just 20 cover her with things. Hey, there!” he cried to the terrier, who had come running back, “bring it to me.” 

20

 They had come up to the terrace by this, and Dan’s confidence, fresh as a gush of water from a rock, had ceased. His face was placid. He didn’t realize what he had said. 

 From out of one of the long windows, dressed in a sable coat, her small head tied up in a motor scarf, the Duchess of Breakwater appeared. She greeted them severely, and Lord Galorey hear her say under her breath to Dan: 

 “You promised to be back to drive with me before dinner, Dan. Did you forget?” 

 And as Galorey left the boy to make his peace, the first smile of amusement broke over his face. He felt that the duchess had between her and her capture of Dan Blair’s heart the elusive picture of some “nice girl”—not much perhaps, but it might be very hard to tear away the picture of the ideal that was ever before the blue eyes of this man who had a fortune to spend on her! 

21CHAPTER II—THE DUCHESS APPROVES

21

 His attentions to the Duchess of Breakwater had not been so conspicuous or so absorbing as to prevent the eager mothers—who, true to her word, Lady Galorey had invited down—from laying siege to Dan Blair. Lady Galorey asked him: 

 “Don’t you want to marry any one of these beauties, Dan?” And Blair, with his beautiful smile and what Lily called his inspired candor, answered: 

 “Not on your life, Lady Galorey!” 

 And she agreed, “I think myself you are too young.” 

 “No,” Dan refuted, “you are wrong there. I shall marry as fast as I can.” 

 His hostess was surprised. 22 

22

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