She was pondering thus, looking about her with surprise, one especially snowy, dreary winter afternoon as she took her way to Mrs. Hewston's. It was one of those thoroughly depressing days when nothing could really raise one's spirits but the inspiring glow of firelight. Mrs. Wilstead certainly looked as if she needed that and all positively cheering if not inebriating things as she entered Mrs. Hewston's drawing-room. Her piquant dark face was meant for smiles and gaiety, all of her features apparently designed to that end, for the corners of her mouth, the tip of her nose, the slant of her eyes, all inclined upward. It is a tragedy when a person of such countenance is in an introspective or melancholy mood. Sober meditations have an aging and blighting effect on the features of those born to look out upon the world with an arch and piquant interest. Isabel Hewston roused herself a little reluctantly. She was sitting alone most comfortably in a delightfully easy chair, she had on a becoming and loose Paris tea-gown. She had resolutely put behind her the haunting specter of increasing flesh, had taken an afternoon off from the persistent and continued battle she had been forced to wage with it, and now lay, a box of sweets on the table beside her, a new novel in her hand, enjoying to the full her temporary respite. It is to her credit that she put aside her book at the most nerve-tingling paragraph without a sigh. "Dear Alice," she exclaimed, lifting herself on one elbow, "you have a bad-news look all over you, the very rustle of your skirt proclaims it. What can be the matter?" "Give me some tea," said Mrs. Wilstead gloomily, "and let me sit down and rest." She slowly removed her furs. "My dear Isabel, do you mean to say you do not know?" "Know what?" asked Mrs. Hewston in bewilderment, ringing and mechanically ordering tea. "How could I possibly know anything after just getting off the steamer this morning? What has happened? You haven't been speculating, Alice, and losing all your money?" Mrs. Wilstead hastily disclaimed any such unforgivable crime and inconsolable grief as losing money. "Then really you have not heard," she exclaimed. "Isabel, I am more worried than I can say. Lemon, please. It is stupid of you, Isabel, never to get into your head the fact that I couldn't be guilty of taking cream. To think of such a thing occurring! I had hoped that with Eugene Gresham out of the way, having the decency to go to England and France, and the papers full of his spectacular stunts, that all talk would cease and that when Cresswell Hepworth came back from that western trip that everything would be all right." "What are you talking about?" asked Isabel Hewston with the calmness of despair. "If it isn't too much trouble, would you mind making a few explanations? Just one might suffice."