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Mitchell led the way out to dinner, Irene's calure she hts of the candle-shades! How gracefully she ordered this away, and that brought, even while she laughed and chatted so delightfully And she--she--that superb woman of birth,Not only that, but the whole horrible indecision which lay on hihtmare could in that way be brushed aside He felt the blood of shame rush to his face, but it ran back to its source in a et him She would marry some mountaineer, perhaps the teacher, Warren Wilks, and in that case the man would take her into his arms, and--No, Mostyn's blood boiled and beat in his brain with the sudden passionate fury of a primitive man; that would be unbearable She had said she had kissed no other man and never would Yes, she was his; her whole wonderful, war was his; and yet--and yet how could it be?

"You seem preoccupied" Irene smiled on him "Are you already worried over business?"

"I'm afraid I always have more or less to bother me," he answered, evasively "Then, too, a hot, dusty bank is rather depressing after pure opene returned," she slorious tiroup with us, you know, and we kept together The others said ere clannish and stuck-up, but we didn't care We played all sorts of pranks after father went to bed"

"You would have thought so if you had heard them, Dick," the oldand raised such a row that the other guests of the hotel threatened to call in the police"

"It was the greatest lark I ever was in," Irene declared, with a hearty laugh "That night Cousin Kitty put on a suit of Andy Buckton's clothes In the dark we all took her for a boy She was the hed till I was sick"

Dinner over, they went out to the veranda The lawn stretched green and luscious down to the white paveht over the street Mitchell left them seated in a hammock and sauntered down to the side fence, where he stood talking to a neighbor as sprinkling his laith a hose and nozzle