at the keenness of her glance, while a brighter rose than Katie cared to
show tinted the creamy skin and made her bend a moment to arrange the
rosette of her slipper. The movement showed her hair in all its
perfection, for at this early hour it had not been tortured into
elaborateness, but as she sat in her bedroom talking with her guest, was
loosely coiled to be out of the way, and thus drawn back in its wavy
abundance showed now burnished, and now a darker brown, as the sunlight
or the shadow fell upon it.

"He's not always sensible," she answered, lifting her head again with a
half defiant gesture, and smiling. Katie's smile was irresistible, it
won her admirers by the score, not altogether because it gave a glimpse
of beautiful teeth, or because her mouth was at its perfection then, but
that it was an expression of childlike abandonment to the spirit of the
moment, which charmed the gay because they sympathized with it and the
serious because it was a mood of mind into which they would be glad to
enter. "Stephen has not been quite himself lately, rather stupid," and
she looked as if she were not unsuspicious of the reason.

"Too many of us admirers, he thinks?" laughed Elizabeth. "For he is
bright enough when he takes the trouble to speak, but generally he
doesn't seem to consider any one of sufficient importance to amuse."

"That is not so," cried Katie, "you are mistaken. But you don't know
Stephen very well," she added. "What a pity that you are not living
here, then you would, and then we should have known each other all our
lives, instead of only since we went to school together. What good times
we had at Madam Flamingo's. There you sit, now, and look as meekly
reproving as if you had'nt invented that name for her yourself. It was
so good, it has stood by her ever since."