[Illustration: [Endpaper]] [Illustration: [Flyleaf]] FAIR PLAY _A NOVEL_ BY MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH AUTHOR OF “Self-Raised,” “Ishmael,” “Retribution,” “The Bridal Eve,” “The Deserted Wife,” “Eudora,” “The Haunted Homestead,” “The Widow’s Son,” “Victor’s Triumph,” “The Wife’s Victory,” Etc. [Illustration: [logo]] CHICAGO M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY PRINTERS AND BINDERS 407–429 DEARBORN STREET CHICAGO FAIR PLAY. CHAPTER I. THE FOUR BELLES OF BELLEMONT. “God created woman, a living soul, worthy to stand in His presence and worship him! and if it were only from the reverence she owes him, she should never degrade herself to be any man’s slave! God endowed woman with individual life—with power, will and understanding, brain, heart and hands to do His work; and if it were only in gratitude to him, she should never commit the moral suicide of becoming the nonentity of which man’s law makes a wife!” She was a splendid creature who uttered this heterodoxy, a magnificent and beautiful creature! She spoke fervently, earnestly, passionately, with blazing eyes, flushed cheeks and crimsoned lips that seemed to breathe the fire that burned in her enthusiastic soul. She was the most brilliant of a group of four lovely young girls who were seated on the fresh grass, in a grove of magnolia trees on the south banks of the James. Before them flowed the fair river, fringed with wooded shores and dotted with green isles, all sparkling in the early sunlight of a June morning. Behind them, from amidst its ornamented grounds, arose the white walls of Bellemont College for young ladies. The first day of June was the annual commencement of the college. And these four young girls, all dressed in purest white robes with rose-colored wreaths and sashes, had sauntered out together and grouped themselves under the magnolia trees to wait for the ringing of the bell which should call them to the exhibition room. Four more beautiful young creatures than these could scarcely be found in the world. They were called the Four Belles of Bellemont. They would have been belles anywhere and borne off palms of beauty from all other competitors. Yet beautiful as each one was, the four were not rival belles; because, in fact, each one was of a totally different style from all the others. They might be said to represent the four orders of female beauty—the blue, gray, hazel and black-eyed woman.