She smiled with pleasure at the undoubted admiration in his tone. In the new and fashionable clothes which she had purchased during the last few days, the artistically coiffured hair, the smart hat and carefully-thought-out details of her toilette, she was a transformed being, in no way different from the half a dozen other young ladies who were gathered with their escorts at the further end of the room. "I am glad you think so," she replied. "Seems to me I've had nothing else to do since I got here but buy frocks and things." He looked at her in a puzzled fashion. "You didn't come over with Jocelyn Thew, did you, Nora?" "Of course I didn't," she answered indignantly. "If you want to know the truth, it looked as though there was going to be trouble at Fourteenth Street. Dad made a move out West, and I had a fancy for making a little trip this way." "Kind of lonesome, isn't it?" he asked. "In a way," she sighed. "Still, I am going on presently to where I fancy I shall meet a few friends." "And meanwhile," he remarked, "you are still friendly with Jocelyn Thew, and you dined last night, didn't you, with the man who has sworn to hunt him down?" She shrugged her shoulders. "You know what I think of Jocelyn Thew," she said. "I'm crazy about him, and always shall be, but I've never seen him look twice at a woman yet in his life, and never expect to. Dick!" "Yes, Nora?" "May I ask you a question--straight?" "Of course!" "Don't think I mean to say a word against Jocelyn Thew. He's a white man through and through, and I think if there was any woman in the world he cared for, she would be his slave. But he's a desperate man. Even now the police are trying to draw their net around him. It was all very well for you, when you were painting New York red, to choose your friends where it pleased you, but your sister--she's different, isn't she?--what they call over on our side a society belle. I am not saying that there is a single person in the world too good for Jocelyn Thew to sit down with, but at the present moment--well, he's hard up against it. Things might happen to him, you know, Dick." For a moment the young man was silent. His eyes seemed to look through the walls of the room, seemed to conjure up some spectre from which a moment later he shrank. "You see, Nora," he explained, dropping his voice a little, "there was just one time when Jocelyn Thew stood by me like a brick. I was hard up against it and he saved me." She leaned a little closer to him. "I have often wondered," she murmured. "That was the affair down at the Murchison country house, wasn't it?" Richard Beverley assented silently. "Guess we'll drink these cocktails," he said, watching the waiter approach. "Flying takes something out of you all the time, you know, Nora, and although when I am up my nerves are like a rock, I sometimes feel a little shaky at leave time." "Drink?" she asked tersely.