and the rich, volatile American widow in accordance with the time-honored rule that opposites attract. But some things they had in common, if only things of no higher moment than chiffons and a pretty taste in hospitality. Both danced through life—rather. But theirs was dancing with all the difference. Helen never romped. Her dancing, both actual and figurative, was seemly and slow as the dance on a Watteau fan—thistle-down dignified—minuet. Angela’s, fine of its sort, was less art and more impulse, and yet more studied, less natural. It almost partook of the order of skirt-dancing. Both dancings were pretty to watch, Helen’s the prettier to remember. For the matter of that both dancers were pretty to watch. Helen Bransby at twenty was full as lovely as her childhood had promised. She had been exquisitely loved, and love feeds beauty and adds to it. Angela Hilary had the composite comeliness so characteristic of the well-circumstanced American woman: Irish eyes, a little shrewder, a little harder, than the real thing, hands and feet Irish-small, skin Saxon-fair, soft, wayward hair Spanish-dark, French chic, a thin form Slavic-svelt and Paris-clad, the wide red mouth of an English great-grandmother, and a self-confidence and a social assurance to which no man ever has attained, or ever will, and no woman either not born and bred between Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate—a daring woman, never grotesque; daring in manner, more daring in speech, most daring of all in dress; but never too daring—for her; fantastic, never odious—least of all gross. Each of her vagaries suited her, and the most surprising of all her unexpected gowns became and adorned her: an artificial, hot-house creature, she was the perfectly natural product of civilization at once extravagant, well-meaning and cosmopolitan, if insular too, and she had a heart of gold. A great many people laughed at Mrs. Hilary, especially English people, and never suspected how much more she laughed at them, or how much more shrewdly and with how much more cause—some few liked her greatly, and every one else liked her at least a little; every one except Horace Latham. Latham was afraid of her.

chic

CHAPTER VIII

One evening, early in the autumn of 1916, Morton Grant passed nervously by the lodge of Deep Dale, and along the carriage drive that twisted and curled to the house.

He had cause enough to be nervous. For the second time in thirty years he was disobeying his chief grossly; and the cause of his present turpitude could scarcely have been more unpleasant or less reassuring.

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