"Maud Levy, who has been singing," she said, "is one of the belles in Hebrew society. She has a fine voice. You have no objection, Mr. Faraday, to knowing Jews?" Faraday hastily disclaimed all race prejudices, and she continued, discreetly designating the ladies on the sofa: "There are two delightful girls. Mrs. Peck, the blonde, is the society writer for the _Morning Trumpet_. She is an elegant woman of a very fine Southern family, but she has had misfortunes. Her marriage was unhappy. She and Peck are separated now, and she supports herself and her two children. There was no hope of getting alimony out of that man." "And that is Genevieve Ryan beside her," Madame Delmonti went on. "I think you'd like Genevieve. She's a grand girl. Her father, you know, is Barney Ryan, one of our millionaires. He made his money in a quick turn in Con. Virginia, but before that he used to drive the Marysville coach, and he was once a miner. He's crazy about Genevieve and gives her five hundred a month to dress on. I'm sure you'll get on very well together. She's such a refined, pleasant girl"----and Madame Delmonti, chattering her praises of Barney Ryan's handsome daughter, conducted the stranger to the shrine. Miss. Genevieve smiled upon him, much as she had upon the singer, and brushing aside her skirts of changeable green and heliotrope silk, showed him a little golden-legged chair beside her. Mrs. Peck and Madame Delmonti conversed with unusual insight and knowledge on the singing of Maud Levy, and Faraday was left to conduct the conversation with the heiress of Barney Ryan. She was a large, splendid-looking girl, very much corseted, with an ivory-tinted skin, eyes as clear as a young child's and smooth freshly red lips. She was a good deal powdered on the bridge of her nose, and her rich hair was slightly tinted with some reddish dye. She was a picture of health and material well being. Her perfectly fitting clothes sat with wrinkleless exactitude over a figure which in its generous breadth and finely curved outline might have compared with that of the Venus of Milo. She let her eyes, shadowed slightly by the white lace edge of her large hat, whereon two pink roses trembled on large stalks, dwell upon Faraday with a curious and frank interest entirely devoid of coquetry. Her manner, almost boyish in its simple directness, showed the same absence of this feminine trait. While she looked like a goddess dressed by Worth, she seemed merely a good-natured, phlegmatic girl just emerging from her teens. Faraday had made the first commonplaces of conversation, when she asked, eyeing him closely, "Do you like it out here?" "Oh, immensely," he responded, politely. "It's such a fine climate." "It is a good climate," admitted Miss. Ryan, with unenthusiastic acquiescence; "but we are not so proud of that as we are of the good looks of the Californian women. Don't you think the women are handsome?" Faraday looked into her clear and earnest eyes.