look of affection that you would have been proud of, Jane,--using
unconsciously, until after I had done it, the warmth I had tried
unsuccessfully on Richard Hall at the Astor, not forty-eight hours
ago, but two thousand miles away. And it got a response that puzzles me
to think of yet. It was just a look, but there was a thought of Father
in it, also a suggestion of the glance he bestowed on Sallie's twins. I
remembered that the Crag seldom speaks, and that's what makes you spend
your time breathlessly listening to him.

"Well, come on, everybody, let's go home and undress, and forget about
the wedding," came in Henrietta's positive and executive tones. "Let's
go and take the strange lady with us. We can have company if we can't be
it. She can sleep other side of me, next the wall."

I have never met anybody else at all like Henrietta Carruthers, and I
never shall unless Jane Mathers marries and--I sincerely hope that some
day she and Jane will meet.

And the next ten minutes was one of the most strenuous periods of time I
ever put in, in all my life. I longed, really longed, to go home with
Sallie and Henrietta, and sleep next the wall at Widegables with the
rest of the Crag's collection. But I knew Glendale well enough to see
plainly that if I thus once give myself up to the conventions that by
Saturday night they would have me nicely settled with his relicts, or in
my home with probably two elderly widows and a maiden cousin or so to
look after me. And then, by the end of the next week, they would have
the most suitable person in town fairly hunted by both spoken and mental
influence, to the moonlight end of my front porch, with matrimonial
intentions in his pocket. I knew I had to take a positive stand, and
take it immediately. I must be masculinely firm. No feminine wiles would