Edith was equally mysterious with Marian, smiling sagely when her friend tried to draw her out; but she admitted or denied nothing. She faithfully performed her self-assumed duties, and Cosden lived up to his agreement to take the medicine his doctor prescribed. By this time he was able to pull through on the one-step and the canter waltz, but his great success was the fox-trot. This, he discovered without assistance, is danced in as many ways as there are individual dancers, so he developed an original "series" which gave him supreme satisfaction, since as he explained, no one could prove whether he or his partner was at fault when a mistake was made. Edith had long since given up all hope of having him follow the music, but he had actually learned the steps, and his persistency in pursuing with grim relentlessness what she knew to be an irksome duty could but win her respect. In fact, she looked upon the result of her experiment with no little pride. Each afternoon the two might be seen on the ball-room floor, working away as if their lives depended upon it, with the Victrola repeating over and over the same tunes which, except for her own persistency, would have driven Edith mad. Always after the dancing lesson they promenaded the hotel piazza "to cool off," and their joint devotion to their undertaking was so assiduous that it became almost a feature of the hotel life. Edith's triumph came when Merry was called in to "assist" at one of the later lessons. Try as they would, Cosden and his new partner were at odds in each effort they made to dance together, while with Edith he succeeded passably well. In Cosden's mind there could be but one explanation. "I always thought she knew how to dance," he expressed it after Merry left them alone. "How little you can judge of anything until you know how to do it yourself!" And Edith, wise person that she was, did not explain to him that this was the first time he had danced without her guiding hand! Cosden had become dependent upon his chief adviser in other ways than dancing. He found her so sympathetic in listening to his problems and so helpfully intelligent in discussing them that he gradually confided to her more of his intimate affairs than he had ever shared with any one else. Ostensibly, she was adviser only in his affair with Merry, but it was a short step to extend her line of operations without having him realize that she was exceeding her contract. She explained matters which seemed subtle to him with such clearness, her counsels were so wise and her criticisms so fearless that Cosden's admiration was profound. "You are a bit severe, you know," he said to her one day; "but I like it. The only reason I go to a specialist is because I know he understands his subject better than I do, and so I swallow what he tells me, hook, line and sinker. And you are a great success as an expert in your line, Miss Stevens,--you're all right."