The Fighting Chance

Sylvia and Siward were in the music-room, very busily figuring out the probable cost of a house in that section of the city east of Park Avenue, where the newly married imprudent are forming colonies--a just punishment for those reckless brides who marry for love, and are obliged to drive over two car-tracks to reach their wealthy friends and relatives of the Golden Zone.

And Leila, in her pretty invalid's gown of lace, stood silently at the music-room door, watching them. Her thick, dark hair was braided, and looped up under a black bow behind; and she looked like a curious and impertinent schoolgirl peeping at them there through the crack of the door, bending forward, her joined hands flattened between her knees.

"Oh," she said at length, in a frankly disappointed voice, "is that all you do when your chaperone is abed?"

"Angel!" cried Sylvia, springing up, "how in the world did you ever manage to come downstairs?"

"On the usual number of feet. If you think it's very gay up there--" She laid her hands in Sylvia's, and looked at Siward with all the old mockery in her eyes--eyes which slanted a little at the corners, Japanese-wise: "Stephen, you are growing positively plump. You'd better not do that until Sylvia marries you. Look at him, dear! He's getting all smooth in the cheeks, like a horrid undergraduate boy!"

She released one hand and greeted Siward. "Thank you," she said serenely, replying to his inquiry, "I am perfectly well. You pay me no compliment when you ask me, after you have seen me." And to Sylvia, looking at her white flannels: "What have you been playing? What do you find to do with yourself, Sylvia, with that plump sun-burned boy at your heels all day long? Are there no men about?"

"One's coming to-day," said Sylvia, laughing; and slipping her arm around Leila's waist, she strolled with her out through the tall glass doors to the terrace, with a backward glance of airy dismissal for Siward.

Plank had wired from New York, the night before, that he was coming; in another hour he would be there. Leila knew it perfectly well, and she looked into the wickedly expressive young face of the girl beside her, eyes soft but unsmiling.

"Child, child," she murmured, "you do not know how much of a man a man can be!"

"Yes, I do!" said Sylvia hotly.

Leila smiled. "Hush, you little silly! I've talked Stephen and praised Stephen to you for days and days, and the moment I dare mention another man you fly at me, hair on end!"

"Oh, Leila, I know it! I'm perfectly mad about him, that's all. But don't you think he is looking like himself again? And, Leila, isn't he strangely attractive?--I don't mean just because I happen to be in love with him, but give me a perfectly cold and unbiassed opinion, dear, because there is simply no use in a girl's blinding herself to facts, or in ignoring certain fixed laws of symmetry, which it is perfectly obvious that Mr. Siward fulfils in those well-known and established proportions which--"