With a bow and smile for Mrs. Mason and Craig, Alice said good morning and hurried away. CHAPTER XII. A COQUETTE. Alice found Helen in her room, seated before a mirror and waiting for Celine to arrange her hair. On the dressing table were combs and brushes and cut glass bottles and all the paraphernalia of a lady’s toilet, golden stoppered and silver mounted, showing a luxurious taste and utter disregard of expenditure. She had read Tennyson’s May Queen in bed and two or three shorter poems, and had committed a stanza or two here and there in order to seem posted, if Craig proved to be an admirer of Tennyson. If he were not and she found herself in deep waters she trusted to her tact and Alice’s help to extricate herself some way. Getting tired of Tennyson and the bed she arose at last and in her dressing gown dawdled about the room, beginning to feel bored and wondering why Alice did not come. She had heard from her mother that Craig was stopping in the hotel, and Celine had told her of being introduced to him by a funny old gentleman as Miss Mooseer, and Helen had laughed till she cried. Celine had also told her that Alice was talking with him on the north piazza. “Pumping him,” she said to herself. “I hope it won’t take her long. I am so impatient to hear the result and know if he is worth the trouble.” Sitting down by the window in a chair she began to think of the past and the white faces and sad eyes which had looked at her during the seven years since her first offer when she was only fifteen. Behind these were other faces, some of boys, some of men, whom she had played with and flattered and then thrown aside without regret. “Doesn’t it say somewhere in the Bible ‘Vengeance is mine and I will repay,’ saith the Lord,” she thought. “Surely my payment will be heavy if it equal my indebtedness; but it is my nature, and I cannot help it.” At last as she grew more and more impatient and Alice did not come, she sent Celine for her. Celine, who had been Helen’s maid for years and knew her nearly as well as she knew herself, was never in the way, and Helen bade her go on with her hair dressing as soon as she re-entered the room. To Alice who came in with Celine her first word was, “Well?” “Well!” Alice returned, and Helen continued, “What news from Genoa? You have been gone a long time and must have something to tell.” “Lots! About everything. Shall it be the Sphinx first, or Hercules?” Alice asked, and Helen repeated, “Hercules? Who is he? Oh, yes, I know. I’ll take him second, and the Sphinx first. I know he is here; mamma told me. You have been on the river with a dreadful boy who stands on his head and picked your pocket. Skip him, and begin with the Sphinx. What is he like?”