Then her gaze became remote as she stood slowly tapping her gloved palm
with her riding-crop.

"I think I'll dress," she said absently.

"Good-bye, then," nodded Kathleen.

"Good-bye," said the girl, turning lightly away across the hall.
Kathleen's eyes followed the slender retreating figure, so slimly
compact in its buoyancy. There was always something fascinatingly boyish
in Geraldine's light, free carriage--just a touch of carelessness in the
poise--almost a swing at times to the step. Duane had once said: "She
has a bully walk!" Kathleen thought of it as, passing a mirror, she
caught sight of herself. And the sudden glimpse of her own warm, rich
beauty in all its exquisite maturity startled her. Surely she seemed to
be growing younger.

She was. Dark-violet eyes, ruddy hair, a superb figure, a skin so white
that it looked fragrant, made Kathleen Severn amazingly attractive. Men
found her, to their surprise, rather unresponsive. She was amiable
enough, nicely formal, and perfectly bred, it is true, but inclined to
that sort of aloofness which is marked by lapses of inattention and the
smiling silences of preoccupation.

She had married, very young, an army officer convalescing from Texan
fever. He died suddenly on the very eve of their postponed
wedding-trip. This was enough to account for lapses of inattention in
any woman.

But Kathleen Severn had never been demonstrative. She was slow to care