stand it to marry rich, then!"

Edith and Sibyl were radiant: at first they had watched Miss Vertrees
with an almost haggard anxiety, wondering what disasterous effect
Sheridan's pastoral gaieties--and other things--would have upon her,
but she seemed delighted with everything, and with him most of all.
She treated him as if he were some delicious, foolish old joke that
she understood perfectly, laughing at him almost violently when he
bragged--probably his first experience of that kind in his life. It
enchanted him.

As he proclaimed to the table, she had "a way with her." She had,
indeed, as Roscoe Sheridan, upon her right, discovered just after
the feast began. Since his marriage three years before, no lady had
bestowed upon him so protracted a full view of brilliant eyes; and,
with the look, his lovely neighbor said--and it was her first speech
to him--

"I hope you're very susceptible, Mr. Sheridan!"

Honest Roscoe was taken aback, and "Why?" was all he managed to say.

She repeated the look deliberately, which was noted, with a
mystification equal to his own, by his sister across the table.
No one, reflected Edith, could image Mary Vertrees the sort of girl
who would "really flirt" with married men--she was obviously the
"opposite of all that." Edith defined her as a "thoroughbred,"
a "nice girl"; and the look given to Roscoe was astounding. Roscoe's
wife saw it, too, and she was another whom it puzzled--though not
because its recipient was married.