be uneasy under the scrutiny of eyes that she felt to be unfriendly, and she had become exceptionally partial to veils. Her hair, originally a light, unaggressive red, had been "done over" into a sort of vivid, brittle "Titian." There were occasional reddish gleams in her slightly furtive, small eyes of hazel. She had a child's foot, and she was inordinately proud of her tiny, waxy, too-white hands. In a company she smiled continuously in order to display her teeth, which were perfectly assembled and of an almost porcelain whiteness. Mrs. Treharne was called a pretty woman even by those who perhaps entertained unexpressed misgivings as to how she might look at her rising hour.

After Laura had gone Mrs. Treharne tried, before her glass, the effect of a smile—somewhat frozen and quickly obliterated—upon her carefully studied and artfully executed make-up mask; then sighed drearily as she sank into a chair and began polishing her nails upon her palms.

"Of course Laura is right, as usual—it wouldn't help matters particularly if Louise were a boy," she mused with puckered brows. "A boy might be longer in finding out how affairs stood here; but when he did find out—what a storm, what heroics, what juvenile reproaches, what a stagey to-do there would be! Perhaps, after all, it is as well that Louise is—Louise. She can adapt herself to—to things as they are. She must. There's no other way. She can't have lost the tact she possessed as a child. I wish I knew her better, so that I could have some sort of an idea just what to expect from her. I hope she understands the good sense of closing one's eyes to things that can't be improved by looking at them. Perhaps I shall be lucky enough to marry her off quickly. That would be almost too easy a solution for me, with my vile luck, to expect."

She rang for Heloise to have her furs in readiness.

"It was thoroughly decent of Laura," she thought on, finger at lip, "to advise me to bolt all this and take refuge with her. But I haven't the nerve—that's the plain truth of it. How could I ask Treharne to renew the allowance? What a triumph it would be for him if I were to do that! He would be too Quixotic to view it as a triumph, but that wouldn't alleviate my humiliation in asking him. And what would the three or four thousand a year be in comparison with—"

"The car is at the door, Madame," announced Heloise, appearing with the sables. Mrs. Treharne smiled at herself before the glass to smooth out the wrinkles of her musing, tripped lightly down the stairs, and was humming blithely when she nodded indulgently at the 

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