“What do you mean by ‘as things are now’? Has anything happened to change your ideas since my husband first made the suggestion to you?” Mariposa told her lie as a woman does, with reservations. It was creditably done, for it was the first lie she had ever told in her life. “Nothing has actually happened, but--I--I--have changed.” “And are you going to let a girl’s whims stand in the way of your future success in life? I can’t believe that. My dear, you’re handsome and you’ve a fine voice, but do you think those two things, without a cent behind them, are going to put you on top of the heap? You’re not the woman to get there without a lot of boosting.” “Why should I want to get on top of the heap?” “Oh, if you _want_ to stay at the bottom--” Mrs. Shackleton gave a shrug and rose to her feet. The girl was incomprehensible. She was either very subtile and deep, or she was extraordinarily dull and shallow. Shackleton had said to her once that she seemed to him childish and undeveloped, for her age. The woman’s keen eye saw deeper. If Mariposa was not disingenuous, she would always, on the side of shrewdness and worldly wisdom, be undeveloped. “Well, my dear,” she said coldly, “it all rests with yourself. But I can’t, conscientiously, let you throw your best chances away. We won’t speak of this any more to-day. But go home and think about it, and in a week or two let me know what conclusion you’ve come to. Don’t ever throw a chance away, even if you don’t happen to like the person who offers it.” She gave Mariposa a shrewd and good-natured smile. The girl, her face crimsoning, was about to answer, when the hall door opened, and, with a sound of laughter and a whiff of violets, Maud and the Count de Lamolle entered the room. In her heavy mourning, Maud looked more nearly pretty than she had ever done before. It was not the dress that beautified her, but the happiness of her engagement to Latimer, with whom she was deeply in love, which had lent her the fleeting grace and charm that only love, well bestowed, can give. She carried a large bunch of violets in her hand, and her face was slightly flushed. The count, who had attentively read the will of Jake Shackleton in the papers, was staying on in San Francisco. His attentions to Maud were not more assiduous, but they were more “serious,” to use the technical phrase, than heretofore. She would make him an ideal wife, he thought. Even her lack of beauty was an advantage. When an American girl was both rich and pretty, she was more than even the most tactful and sophisticated Frenchman could manage. Maud, ugly, gentle, and not clever, would be a delightful wife, ready to love humbly, unexacting, easy to make happy.