years of age she was already in the full bloom of womanly loveliness. Of no great height, she possessed one of those perfect figures seen only in Spain. She walked with the swaying, graceful gait of the Andalusian woman. An olive skin, large, liquid eyes of midnight blackness, lips scarlet as a pomegranate blossom, full and a trifle voluptuous.

As became a daughter of the South, Ruth was arrayed in a ravishing dinner-dress of black and gold which suited her swarthy beauty. In the coils of her blue-black hair she wore sparkling diamonds; the same stones blazed on neck and wrists, and in this splendour she seemed to the excited eyes of her lover like some gorgeous tropical flower blossoming beneath ardent skies.

"Come now," she said, sinking into a chair. "We have just a few minutes before the others come in, and they are not to be passed in silence."

"Who are the others?" Neil asked, taking a chair beside her.

She waved a fan of black and yellow feathers from which, true daughter of Spain as she was, she would not part even in winter.

"Oh, all the people you have met here before," she said, smoothing her dainty gloves. "My father, Jennie Brawn, my uncle and aunt, and Geoffrey Heron."

As she pronounced the last name Ruth stole a laughing glance at her lover. And, as she had expected, a shadow came over his face, and his colour went and came like that of a startled girl.

"Oh, is he here?" was his comment. "He is a very good sort of fellow."

"Too good for your taste, Monsieur Othello," laughed Miss Cass, tapping his flushed cheek with her fan. "I see how it is. You think he is a rival."

"I don't think it, I know it. Ruth."

"Well," with a coquettish toss of her head, "perhaps he is. But you think, moreover, that I admire him. I do, as one might admire a picture. He is good-looking and very nice----"

"I can't contradict you," interrupted the young man.

"But," she resumed smoothly, "he is not clever, he is not musical, and he is not the most jealous man in the world."

"Meaning me, I suppose?"

"Of course. Who else should I mean? Come. I won't have your forehead wrinkled." She brushed the lines away with her fan. "Smile, Neil, 

 Prev. P 17/192 next