“Dallas Bain? Oh, I asked him to come in, but he refused, and went back to Sea View alone. Fact is, he has no eyes for any woman but my cousin, Lutie Fleming. Most absorbing flirtation I ever saw, really,” returned Royall, trying thus early to make a clever move in the game of love, and checkmate Dallas, whom he knew might prove a dangerous rival for Daisie’s heart. Miss Bell was very quiet. She sat with downcast eyes, playing with a rose in her belt, the seashell glow coming and going on her cheeks with some secret excitement. Royall wondered if it were emotion at his presence or pique that Dallas had not cared for her society. He decided that it must be the latter, for she soon brought her call to an end without having spoken a dozen words to him, and he did not dare offer to walk home with her, as he longed to do. He felt a jealous certainty that she was vexed at Dallas, and decided that it would take some scheming to divert her thoughts from his handsome friend. “But I’ll do it, for my heart’s gone, and I’m almost tempted to ask her to marry me already, even if she is poor and not in our set, as Lutie says. But, Jove! She’s the grandest beauty in the world! And wouldn’t she make a sensation as my bride, covered with diamonds! Yes, I’ll win her if I can, and I must manage to keep Dallas out of the running, for she could not help showing disappointment when I said that about his flirting with Lutie; but I’ll make her forget him directly, and all the better for her, too, since I’m the better match of the two,” cogitated Royall, who, though he knew that his effeminate blond beauty, so like his cousin’s, could not compare with the dark splendor of tall and striking Dallas Bain, still considered that his golden charms more than counterbalanced the difference. “All is fair in love or war,” he said coolly; and, pursuant of his scheme to keep Dallas away from Daisie, he said to him that evening: “Just as well that you didn’t go in to see Miss Bell to-day. She is disappointing, really. Pretty as a picture, of course, but so bread-and-butterish and schoolgirly, you know. Always posing for effect, as my cousin said, but not much to her, after all, but simpers and giggles.” Dallas felt a keen thrill of disappointment and disgust, for Daisie’s face had haunted him for many days, and it gave him a shock to think that she was like what Royall said--simpering and giggling like a silly schoolgirl. The young widow had treated him to enough of that, trying to pose as girlish, despite her three years of wifehood and two of widowhood, and he decided that he did not care to know Daisie now, since even the careless Royall was no longer interested. CHAPTER II. THE OTHER ONE. When Daisie Bell sat reading on the porch next day, a messenger brought her a basket of rare flowers and a note from Royall Sherwood, asking permission to call on her that evening. She went in to her aunt, asking demurely what she ought to answer.