"Hurry, Hélène," said Sylvia. "It is late, and Mr. Page is dying of hunger," In spite of the exhortation to haste, Hélène stopped short, uplifted brush in hand. "Mr. Page, the millionaire!" she exclaimed. Sylvia blinked at her in the glass, amazed conjectures racing through her mind. But she had sufficient self-possession to say, carelessly as though his identity was nothing to her: "I don't know. It is the first time I have seen him. He certainly is not handsome." Hélène thrust in the hairpins with impassioned haste and deftness, and excitedly snatched a lace jacket from a drawer. To the maid's despair Sylvia refused this adornment, refused the smallest touch of rouge, refused an ornament in her hair. Hélène wrung her hands. "But see, Mademoiselle is not wise! For what good is it to be so savage! He is more rich than all! They say he owns all the State of Colorado!" Sylvia, already in full retreat towards the dining-room, caught this last geographic extravagance of Gallic fancy, and laughed, and with this mirth still in her face made her re-entry on the veranda. She had not been away three minutes from the group there, and she was to the eye as merely flushed and gay when she came back as when she went away; but a revolution had taken place. Closely shut in her hand, she held, held fast, the key Hélène had thrust there. Behind her smile, her clear, bright look of valiant youth, a great many considerations were being revolved with extreme rapidity by an extremely swift and active brain. Swift and active as was the brain, it fairly staggered under the task of instantly rearranging the world according to the new pattern: for the first certainty to leap into sight was that the pattern was utterly changed by the events of the morning. She had left the house, betrayed, defenseless save for a barren dignity, and she had re-entered it in triumph, or at least with a valid appearance of triumph, an appearance which had already tided her over the aching difficulty of the first meeting with Morrison and might carry her ... she had no time now to think how far. Page and Arnold were still invisible when she emerged again on the veranda, and Mrs. Marshall-Smith pounced on her with the frankest curiosity. "Sylvia, do tell us--how in the world--"