A craving for a glass of water has served its purpose a thousand times; as her cavalier solicitously departed to fetch the cooling draught, she rose, and carelessly humming the refrain the music had just left off, sauntered lightly out by another door to the open air. A swift glance about her showed her she was unobserved and she stepped down to the grass and along the winding path to a bench at some distance in the shrubbery. Here the smiling mask slipped from her face and with a shiver she dropped her hot face in her hands. There were no tears. The wave that was welling over her was one of bitter humiliation. She had shot her bolt and missed—she, Katharine Fargo! For three years she had held John Valiant, romantically speaking, in the hollow of her shapely hand. Now she had all but thrown herself at his feet—and he had turned away to this flame-haired, vivid girl whom he had not known as many months! [Pg 330]The rankling barb was dipped in no poison of unrequited love. Hers was the anger of the self-willed and intensely proud woman denied her dearest wish, and crossed and flouted for the first time in her pampered exquisite life. Heavy footfalls all at once approached her—two men were coming from the house. There was the spitting crackle of a match, and as she peered out, its red flare lighted the massive face and floating hair of Major Bristow. His companion’s face was in the shadow. She waited, thinking they would pass; but to her annoyance, when she looked again, they had seated themselves on a bench a few paces away. To be found mooning in the shrubbery like a schoolgirl did not please her, but it seemed there was no recourse, and she had half arisen, when the major’s gruff-voiced companion spoke a name that caused her to sit down abruptly. To do Katharine justice, it did not occur to her at the moment that she was eavesdropping. And such was the significance of the sentences she heard, and such their bearing on the turmoil of her mind, that a woman of more sensitive fiber might have lingered. “Bristow, Shirley’s a magnificent girl.” “Finest in seven counties,” agreed the major’s bass. “Whom do you reckon she’ll choose to marry?” “Chilly Lusk, of course. The boy’s been in love [Pg 331]with her since they were in bibs. And he comes as near being fit for her as anybody.” “Humph!” said the other sardonically. “No man I ever saw was half good enough for a good woman. But good women marry just the same. It isn’t Lusk. I used to think it would be, but I’ve got a pair of eyes in my head, if you haven’t. It’s young Valiant.” The pearl fan twisted in Katharine’s fingers. What she had guessed was an open secret, then! The major made an exclamation that had the effect of coming after a jaw-dropped silence. “I—I never thought of that!” The other resumed slowly, somewhat bitterly, it seemed to the girl listening. “If her mother was in love with Sassoon—”