"A gay, dimpling girl and a stalwart, handsome man were whirling down Fifth Avenue" _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE "Amelia touched her guitar with a white, pudgy hand" 32 "For a few mornings past Belinda had noticed something unusual about the morning expedition" 36 "'It's scandalous, madam'" 38 "... curled his mustache airily, and allowed his glance to rove boldly over the display of youthful femininity" 46 "'I heard him say, "Grand Central, and hurry"'" 50 "'Your game's up, and you don't marry an heiress this trip'" 54 "The girls on the bed drew their knees up to their chins" 102 "They offered her caramels with fervent sympathy" 106 "'A dark man is coming into your life'" 120 "... wasted her substance in riotous buying of photographs" 124 "Cynthia quite forgot to go back to the French class" 126 Concerning Belinda CHAPTER I BELINDA AND THE TWELVE FOR years New York had been beckoning to Belinda. All during her time at the western co-educational college, where she collected an assortment of somewhat blurred impressions concerning Greek roots, Latin depravity, and modern literature, and assisted liberally in the education of her masculine fellow-students, New York, with its opportunities for work and experience, had lured her on. Fortune she would not need. Daddy had attended to that in his will, but success, and a knowledge of the world outside of Indiana, she must have. This fixed purpose rendered her immune from the sentimental and matrimonial epidemics that devastate the Junior and Senior ranks in co-educational institutions. She graduated with honours--and with scalps. Many Seniors went away sorrowful because of her, the French professor lapsed into hopeless Gallic gloom, and even the professor of ancient history was forced into painful recognition of the importance of the moderns.