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"Well?" inquired Mrs Vendenning, looking up at the tall, pale girl she was chaperoning so carefully during their sojourn in town

"Oh, you know the rhy up somebody I'm bored stiff"

"What did Howard Quarrier want?"

"He knows, I think, but he hasn't yet inforatha," said Mrs Vendenning, gathering up the packs for a new shuffle: "Grace Ferrall doesn't fancy Howard's attention to you and she's beginning to say so When you go back to Shotover you'd better let hiatha

"What?"

"No; I don't think so However, I'll let you know to-morrow It all depends--but I don't expect to" She turned as her maid tapped on the door "Oh, Captain Voucher Are you at ho the scattered cards

"Yes," said Mrs Vendenning aggressively, "unless you expect hiht Do you?"

"I don't--to-night Perhaps to-morrow I don't know; I can't tell yet" And to her maid she nodded that they were at home to Captain Voucher

Quarrier hadthe hotel lobby They exchanged the careful salutations of lishman's clean-cut face a deeper hue settled as he passed; on Quarrier's, not a trace of eht, stiff-backed and stiff-necked, his long gray-gloved fingers nificent; led the heavens Even in the reeking city itself a slight freshness grew in the air, although there was no wind to stir the parched leaves of the park trees, a which fire-flies floated--their inter out with a silvery, star-like brilliancy

Plank, driving his big ht, Leila Mortilimmer of a fire-fly for the distant lahter floated back to the ears of Sylvia and Siward, curled up in their corners of the huge tonneau But they were too profoundly occupied with each other to heed the sudden care-free laughter of the young h to set thewhen it did sound

Plank had never seen fit to speak to her of her husband's scarcely veiled menace that day he had encountered hionquin Trust Coht was to do so--to talk it over with her, consider the threat and the possibility of its seriousness, and then coical and definite decision as to what their future relations should be Again and again he had been on the point of doing this when alone with Leila--uncomfortable, even apprehensive, because of their frank intimacy; but he had never had the opportunity to do so without deliberately dragging in the subject by the ears in all its ugliness and i that dreadful, vacant change in Leila's face, which the , turn into horror unspeakable