"Well, that is romantic if you like!" cried Aileen, her green eyes dancing. "You have my best wishes. Doesn't it make your Geary Street knight look cheap--he boards somewhere down on Geary Street." "No, it doesn't! And I'm a good American. French marquis, indeed! Mr. Dwight comes of the best old American stock from New York. He told mother so, I'd spit on any old decadent European title." "I wish your mother could hear you. So--he's been getting round her has he? Where on earth did he meet her?" Alexina, with sulky triumph, reported Mr. Dwight's early visit and the favorable impression he had made. Aileen groaned. "That's just the one thing she would fall for in a rank outsider--superlative manners. His being poor is rather in his favor. I'll put a flea in her ear--" "You dare!" Aileen lifted her shoulders. "Well, as a matter of fact I can't. Tattling just isn't in my line. But if I can queer him with you I will." "I won't talk about him any more." Alexina drew herself up with immense dignity. She had the advantage of Aileen not only in inches but in a natural repose of manner. The eminent Judge Lawton's only child, upon whom, possibly, he may have lavished too much education, had a thin nervous little body that was seldom in repose, and her face, with its keen irregular features and brilliant green eyes, shifted its surface impressions as rapidly as a cinematograph. Olive Bascom had soft blue eyes and abundant brown hair, and Sibyl Thorndyke had learned to hold her long black eyes half closed, and had the black hair and rich complexion of a Creole great-grandmother. Alexina was admittedly the "beauty of the bunch." Nevertheless, Miss Lawton had informed her doting parent before this, her first season, was half over, that she was _vivid_ enough to hold her own with the best of them. The boys said she was a live wire and she preferred that high specialization to the tameness of mere beauty. IV Said Alexina: "Sibyl, what are you going to do with your young life? Shall you marry an English duke or a New York millionaire?" But Miss Thorndyke smiled mysteriously. She was not as frank as the other girls, although by no means as opaque as she imagined. Aileen laughed. "Oh, don't ask her. Doubt if she knows. To-day she's all for being intellectual and reading those damn dull Russian novelists. To-morrow she may be setting up as an odalisque. It would suit her style better." Miss Thorndyke's face was also crimson from the heat, but she would not have flushed had it been the day before. She was not subject to sudden reflexes. "Your satire is always a bit clumsy, dear," she said sweetly. "The odalisque is not your rôle at all events." "I don't go in for rôles."