“Well, it’s very becoming to you, anyway,” said Agnes, carefully adjusting the graceful demi-train with its embroidered flounces. She had tied Mollie’s refractory dark curls back from her peach-bloom cheeks with a new rose-pink ribbon, and fastened a bunch of pink roses in with the lace of her square corsage. The round dimpled arms, bare to the elbows, were faultless in shape and contour as they escaped from their soft ruffles. “You look very nice,” continued Agnes, critically. “Thank you; but I feel like a peacock,” said the girl, with such ludicrous strut across the floor that the maid burst out laughing. “Miss Barry, you haven’t got a bit of dignity. You’re just like a child!” she exclaimed. “But go, now, to your aunt. You know how impatient she is.” Molly laughed; but she went along the hall quite sedately and down the stairs, pausing only once to take a gratified peep at herself in the mirror of the tall hatrack opposite the parlor door. “I do look _nice_,” she said, nodding at the radiant reflection, and a sudden thought came to her. She muttered: “I wish _he_ could see me now, the hateful _prig_! I know I _did_ look like a tramp that night.” With that she crossed the hall, turned the handle of the parlor door and entered. A blaze of light greeted her and made her pause in surprise. The big chandeliers in the double parlors were both lighted and Mrs. Barry was entertaining a guest. She rose with suave dignity. “Cecil, this is my niece, Louise--Miss Barry, Mr. Laurens.” Taken by surprise, Molly made a bashful constrained little courtesy without looking up, but as she was about to sink into a seat by her aunt a manly hand grasped hers and a familiar voice said kindly: “I am glad to meet you, Miss Barry. I hope we shall be as good friends as the Barrys and Laurens have been before us!” Molly looked at him with dilated eyes. It was the stranger she had met a few nights before! Her lips parted and closed again without a sound. In pitiable agitation she dropped into a large arm-chair behind Mrs. Barry, telling herself that he had betrayed the whole escapade, and that now the old lady’s wrath would be poured out upon her head in fullest measure. She waited in sheer desperation for the blow to fall on her pretty luckless head. Not a word was addressed to her by either her aunt or the visitor. Mrs. Barry took up the thread of a momentarily dropped discourse about London. They discussed that famous city at some length while the culprit trembled in her chair. Then Mrs. Barry’s gray silk rustled as she rose from her sofa. “Cecil, you will kindly excuse me for ten minutes,” she said, suavely; and, like a wise old lady, left them alone to get acquainted with each other. Molly drew a long, deep breath that was almost a sob, and looked up, thinking that she had escaped a threatening danger. She thought, happily: “He does not recognize me!” But she was mistaken. Cecil Laurens was looking at her with a quizzical smile.