"We are at his house now and the house-party is in full swing. Mr. Gledware is pressing his suit to Annabel with all his might, and her mother is helping him. Nothing stands in the way--for she wants to marry him--except her love for Mr. Edgerton Compton. She told me all about her old romance with Wilfred--you remember him, I guess? She got to liking Edgerton after Wilfred went away because he looked so much like Wilfred. Maybe he does, but he isn't the same kind of man. Mr. Edgerton has spent all his money on fixing up the outside of the house, but Wilfred has spent his on the furnishings. Well! If Annabel could change her heart from one brother to the other just because Edgerton reminded her of Wilfred, I guess she won't have a very hard time making another transfer, especially as Mr. Gledware is traveling her way. When I love anybody, my love is the part of me that comes alive whenever that person is present, or is mentioned. So how could I slide it from one man to another, any more than the man himself could change to another man? And that's the way I love you, Brick, and not all the wealth or fame or good looks in the world (and you have neither) could get my heart away from YOU! "Or from Bill. "The first time I met Mr. Gledware, he acted in a curious way. Of course I was introduced as 'Miss Willock' and he started at the name, and at sight of me--two separate little movements just as plain as anything. Then he said he had heard the name 'Willock' in unusual surroundings, and that my face reminded him of somebody who was dead. That was all there was to it, then. But afterward he heard Annabel call me 'Lahoma,' and his face turned perfectly white. "The first chance he had, after that, he sat down to talk to me in a corner where we wouldn't be overhead, and he asked me questions. So, of course, I told about father and mother taking me across the prairie to the Oklahoma country, and how mother died and father was killed, and I was with the Indians a while and then was taken to live with my cousin, Brick. He listened with his head down, never meeting my eye, and when I had finished all he said was, 'Did you ever bear my name before?' "And I said I never had. Then he asked if I thought I had ever seen him, for he thought he could remember having seem ME somewhere. And I said I wasn't sure, I had met so many people, and there was something familiar about him. Then he said he guessed we hadn't ever met unless accidentally on the trail somewhere, as he had once been down in Texas,--and that was all.