So we smoked, Worth indifferent, I giving all the attention to the people over there: bride and groom; a couple of fair haired girls so like the bride that I guessed them to be sisters; a freckled, impudent looking little flapper I wasn't so sure of; two older men, and an older woman. Then a shifting of figures gave me sight of a face that I hadn't seen before, and I drew in my breath with a whistle. "Whew! Who's the dark girl? She's a beauty!" "Dark girl?" Worth had interest enough to lean into the place where I got my view; after he did so he remained to stare. I sat and grinned while he muttered, "Can't be.... I believe it is!" Something to make him sit up and take notice now. I didn't wonder at his fixed study of the young creature. Not so dressed up as the others--I think she wore what ladies call an evening blouse with a street suit; a brunette, but of a tinting so delicate that she fairly sparkled, she took the shine off those blonde girls. Her small beautifully formed, uncovered head had the living jet of the crow's wing; her great eyes, long-lashed and sumptuously set, showed ebon irises almost obliterating the white. Dark, shining, she was a night with stars, that girl. "Funny thing," Worth spoke, moving his head to keep in line with that face. "How could she grow up to be like this--a child that wasn't allowed any childhood? Lord, she never even had a doll!" "Some doll herself now," I smiled. "Yeh," he assented absently, "she's good looking--but where did she learn to dress like that--and play the game?" "Where they all learn it." I enjoyed very much seeing him interested. "From her mother, and her sisters, or the other girls." "Not." He was positive. "Her mother died when she was a baby. Her father wouldn't let her be with other children--treated her like one of the instruments in his laboratory; trained her in her high chair; problems in concentration dumped down into its tray, punishment if she made a failure; God knows what kind of a reward if she succeeded; maybe no more than her bowl of bread and milk. That's the kind of a deal she got when she was a kid. And will you look at her now!" If he kept up his open staring at the girl, it would be only a matter of time when the wedding party discovered him. I leaned back in my chair to watch, while Worth, full of his subject, spilled over in words. "Never played with anybody in her life--but me," he said unexpectedly. "They lived next house but one to us; the professor had the rest of the Santa Ysobel youngsters terrorized, backed off the boards; but I wasn't a steady resident of the burg. I came and went, and when I came, it was playtime for the little girl." "What was her father? Crank on education?"