Mrs. Thornton, who had been watching the unusual mobility of his face,

met his eyes with a satirical smile in her own, her thin red curling lips

drawn almost straight for a moment. She had played with the fancy, before

anger banished it, that if she had been twenty years younger.... Men had

fallen madly in love with her in her own day.... She detected the

symptoms in this man at once. Her savage will compelled her to accept

accumulating years without a concession. But she had forgotten nothing.

Ruyler may have read her thoughts.

"You know," he said, with an attempt at lightness, although the coast

wind tan, which was his only claim to coloring, had paled a little, "that

girl reminds me so much of you that I have made up my mind to marry her.

I don't care who she is. If you don't help me to meet her conventionally

I'll manage somehow, but I should hate to practice any subterfuges on the

woman I intend to make my wife."

For a moment he had the sensation of being pinned to the wall by that

narrow concentrated gaze. Then Mrs. Thornton swung on her heel. "I'll do

it," she said.

She walked across the room with the supple grace her slender figure had

never lost and sat down beside the older woman. In a moment the

astonished dowagers who had "suffered from her fiendish temper all

evening," saw her talking with spontaneous graciousness to both the

strangers. Madame Delano was at first more distant and reserved than Mrs.

Thornton had ever been, manifestly betraying all the suspicion and

unsocial instincts of her class; but she thawed, and the two women

chatted, while once more the girl's eyes wandered to the dancers.

When Mrs. Thornton had tormented Ruyler for quite fifteen minutes she

beckoned to him imperiously. A moment later he was whirling the girl down

the ball room and thrilling at her contact.

V

The wooing had been as headlong as his falling in love. Helene Delano had

a deep sweet voice, which completed the conquest during the hour they

spent in the grounds under the shelter of a great palm, until hunted down

by a horrified parent.

Helene talked frankly of her life. Her mother had been visiting relatives

in a small New England town--Holbrook Centre, she believed it was called,

but hard American names did not cling to her memory--she loved the soft

Latin and Indian names in California--and there she had met and married

her father, James Delano. They were on their way to Japan when business

detained him in San Francisco much longer than he had expected and she

was born. She believed that he had owned a ranch that he wanted to sell.

He died on the voyage across the Pacific and her mother had returned to

live among her own people in Rouen--very plain bourgeois, but of a

respectability, Oh, la! la!




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