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**+ A +***+ A +&*&+ A *??e?* I When a M < t = ? By MARY < ROBERTS A * RINEHART * I & Copyright 1909? , * **+ *<?*** +?*$+ ?! ? CHAPTER I. At Least I Meant Welt. When the dreadful thing ocurred that night, every one turned on me. The injustice of it hurt me most. They said I got up the dinner, that 1 asked them to give up other engagements and come, that I promised UI kinds of jollilication, if they would come; and then when they did come and got in the papers, and every one ? but ourselves?laughed himself black In the face, they turned on me! I, who suffered ten times to their one! 1 shall never forget what Dallas Brown said to me, standing with a coal shovel in one hand and a?well, perhaps It would be better to tell it all in the order it happened. It began with Jimmy Wilson and a conspiracy, was neipea on ny a iootscjuare piece of yellow paper and a Japanese butler, and it enmeshed and ^ mixed up generally ten respectable \ members of society and a policeman. Incidentally, it involved a pearl collar and a box of soap, which sounds incongruous, doesn't it? It is a great misfortune to be stout, especially for a man. Jim was rotund and looked shorter than he teally was, and as all the lines of his face, or what should have been lines, were really dimples, his face was about as flexible and full of expression as a pillow in a tight cover. The angrier he got the funnier he looked, and when he was raging, and his neck swelled up over his collar and got red. he was entrancing. And everybody liked hiin, and borrowed money from him, and laughed at his pictures (he has one in the Hargrave gallery in London now, so people buy them instead), and smoked his cigarettes, and tried to steal his Jap. The whole story hinges on the Jap. The trouble was. I think, that no one took Jim seriously. His ambition in life was to be taken seriously, but people steadily refused to. His art was a hnc?.M inkp?evoent to himself. If he asked people to dinner, every one expected a frolic. When he married Bella Knowles, people chuckled at the wedding. and considered It the wildest prank of Jimmy's career, although Jim himself seemed to take it awfully hard. We had all known them both for years. I went to Farmington with Bella, and Anne Brown was her matron of honor when she married Jim. My first winter out, Jimmy had paid me a lot of attention. He painted my portrait in oils and had a studio tea to a?u:ku u ! ttfno o vorv nir??? but it did not look like me, so I stayed away from the exhibition. Jim asked me to. He said he was not a photographer, and that anyhow the rest of my features called for the nose he had given me, and that all the Grenze women have long necks. I have not. After I had refused Jim twice he met Bella at a camp in the Adirondacks and when he came back he came at once to see me. He seemed to think I would be sorry to lose him, and he blundered over the telling for twenty minutes. Of course, no woman likes to lose a lover, no matter what she may say about it, but Jim had been getting on my nerves for some time, and I was much calmer than he expected me to be. "If you mean," I said finally in desperation, "that you and Bella are?are in love, why don't you say so. Jim? I think you will find that I stand it wonderfully. He brightened perceptibly. "I didn't know how you would take it. Kit," he said, "and I hope we will always be bully friends. You are absolutely sure you don't care a whoop for me?" "Absolutely," 1 replied, and we shook hands on it. Then he began about Bella; it was very tiresome. Bella is a nice girl, but I had roomed with her at school, and I was under no illusions. When Jim raved about Bella and her banjo, and Bella and her guitar, I had painful moments when I recalled Bella learning her two songs on each instrument, and the old English ballad she had learned to play on the harp. When he said she was too good for him. I never batted an eye. And 1 shook hands solemnly across the teatable again, and wished him happiness ?which was sincere enough, but hopeless?and said we had only been playing a game, but that it was time to stop playing. Jim kissed my hand, and it was reauy very loui-mug. We had been the best of friends ever since. Two days before the wedding he came around from his tailor's, and we burned all his letters to me. He would read one and say: "Here's a crackerjack. Kit." and pass it to me, And after I had read it we would lay it on the firelog, and Jim would say, "I am not worthy of her. Kit. I wonder if I can make her happy?" Or? "Did you know that the Duke of Relford proposed to her in London last winter?" Of course, one has to take the woman's word about a thing like that, but the Duke of Belford had been mad about Maude Richard all that winter You can see that the burning of the letters, which was meant to be reminiscently sentimental, a sort of how-silly-we-were-but-it-is-all-over-now occasion, became actually a two hours eulogy of Bella. And just when I was bored to death, the Mercer girls dropped in and heard Jim begin to read one commencing "dearest Kit." And the next day after the rehearsal dinner they told Bella! There was very nearly no wedding at all. Bella came to se*e me in a frenzy the next morning and threw Jim and his two hundred odd pounds in my face, and although I explained it al1 over and over, she never quite forgave me. That was what made it so hare later?the situation would have beet bad enough without that complication. They went abroad on their wedding journey, and stayed several months And when Jim came back he was fatter than ever. Everybody noticed it Bella had a gymnasium fitted up in s corner of the studio, but he would not use it. He smoked a pipe and paintec -ii ,i-.. -?,i ,irat,l- mikI would eat tin ua? , aiivi V4 ? *? ...? ..v.. starches <>r whatever it is that is fattening. Hut he adored Bella, and ht was madly jealous of her. At dinner: he used to glare at the man who tool her in, although it did not make hin thin. Bella was flirting, too, and In the time they had been married a year people hitehed their chairs togethei +?*?* *?*?* ***** A *?? Jan Marries j ^ Author of 4 [ Ik "The Circular Staircase" J and i ,i- "The Man In Lower Ten" ) ^ The Bohbs-Merrill Co. | +?*?* T +?*?* T *?*?* T | and dropped their voices when the> were mennoneu. Well, on the anniversary of the day Bella left him?oh, yes. she left hirr finally. She was intense enough aboul ; some things, and she said it got on hei nerves to have everybody chuckle when they asked for her husband. They would say, "Hello, Bella! How's Bub' bles? Still banting?" And Bella would try to laugh and say, "He swears his tailor says his waist is smaller, but il it is he must be growing hollow in the back." But she got tired of it at last. Well, on the second anniversary of Bella's departure, Jimmy was feeling pretty glum, and as I say, I am very fond of Jim. The divorce had just gone through and Bella had taken her maiden name again and had had an operation for appendicitis. We heard afterward that they didn't find an appendix, and that the one they showed her in a glass jar was not hers! But if Bella ever suspected, she didn't say. Whether the appendix was anoymous or not, she got box after box of flowers that were, and of course every one knew that it was Jim who sent them. To go back to the anniversary; I went to Rothberg's to see the collection of antique furniture?mother was looking for a sideboard for father's birthday in March?and I met Jimmy there. boring into a worm-hole in a seventeenth century bedpost with the end of a match, and looking his nearest to sad. When he saw me he came over. "I'm blue today, Kit," he said, after we had shaken hands. "Come and help me dig bait, and then let's go fishing. If there's a worm in every whole in that bedpost, we could go into the fish business. It's a good business." "Better than painting?" I asked. But he ignored my gibe and swelled up alarmingly in order to sigh. "This is the worst day of the year for me," he affirmed, starting straight ahead, "and the longest. Look at that crazy clock over there. If you want to see your life passing away, if you want to see the steps by which you are marching to eternity, watch that clock marking the time. Look at that infernal hand staying quiet for sixty seconds and then jumping forward to catch up with the procession, tlgh!" "See here, Jim," I said, leaning forward, "you're not well. You can't go through the rest of the day like this. I know what you'll do: you'll go home to play Grieg on the pianola, and you won't eat any dinner." He looked guilty. "Not Grieg," he protested feebly. "Beethoven.' "You're not going to do either," 1 said with firmnes. "You are going right home to unpack those new draperies that Harry Bayles sent you from Shanghai, and you are going to order dinner for eight?that will he two tables of bridge. And you are not going to touch the pianola." He did not seem enthusiastic, but he rose and picked up his hat, and stood looking down at me where I sat on an old horse-hair covered sofa. "I wish to thunder I had married you!" he said savagery. "You're the finest girl I know. Kit. without exception, and you are going to throw yourself away on Jack Manning, or Max, or some other?" "Nothing of the sort," I said coldly, "and the fact that you didn't marry me does not give you the privilege of abusing my friends. Anyhow, I don't like you when you speak like that." Jim took me to the door and stopped there to sigh. "I haven't been well,' he said heavily. "Don't eat, don't sleep. Wouldn't you think I'd lose flesh? Kit"? he lowered his voice solemnly?"I have gained two pounds!" I said he didn't look it, which appeared to comfort him somewhat, and, because we were old friends, I asked him where Bella was. He said he thought she was in Europe, and that he had heard she was going to marry Reggie Wolfe. Then he sighed again, muttered something about ordering the funeral baked meats to be prepared and left me. That was my entire share in the afI fair. I was the victim, both of circumstances and of their plot, which was mad on the face of it. During the en( tire time they never once let me forget that I got up the dinner, that I telephoned around for them. They asked me why I couldn't cook?when not one I of them knew one side of a range from the other. And for Anne Brown to talk . the way she did?saying I had always , been crazy about Jim, and that she bej lived I had known all along that his , aunt was coming?for Anne to talk like that was sheer idiocy. Yes, there was an aunt. The Japanese butler started . the trouble, and Aunt Selina carried il along. CHAPTER II. The Way It Began. It makes me angry every time 1 think how I tried to make that dinner a success. I canceled a theatei I engagement, and I took the Mercei girls in the electric brougham fathei . had given me for Christmas. Theii chaffeur had been gone for hours with their machine, and they had tele. phoned aii the police stations without success. They were afraid that thert i had been an awful smash: they could easily have replaced Bartlett, as Lol lie said, but it takes so long to get new parts for those foreign cars. Jim had a house well up-town, and it stood just enough apart from th< : other houses to be entirely maddening later. It tvas a three-story affair i with a basement kitchen and ser vants" dining-room. Then, of course I there were cellars, as we found oul afterward. On the first floor then I was a large square hall, a formal rei ception-ronm. behind it a big livingroom that was also a library, then ? ' den, and back of all a Georgian din. ins-room, with windows high abovt the ground. On tne top floor Jim hac .a studio, like every other one I evei t saw?perhaps a little mussier. Jirr t was really a grind at his painting, ant 1 there were cigarette ashes and palettt 1 knives ami buffalo rugs and shield! everywhere. It is strange, but wher I think of thiit terrible house. I al ways see the halls, enormous, coverec { with heavy rugs, and stairs tha 1 would have taken six housemaids t< keep in proper condition. I drean about those stairs, stretching abovt r I me in a Jacob's ladder of shinini , wood and Persian carpets, going up, ? up. clear to the roof. ' t The Dallas Browns walked; they I 3 lived In the next block. And they < ' brought with them a man named 1 ^ Harbison, that no one knew. Anne said he would be great sport, because u he was terribly serious, and had the i 3 most exaggerated ideas of society, ' a and loathed extravagance, and built ] bridges or something. ?he had put i away her cigarettes since he had been l? with them?he and Dallas had been 1 % college friends?and the only chance < I she had to smoke was when she was i getting her hair done. And she had singed quite a lot?a burnt offering, she called it. i "My dear," she said over the tele- 1 ' phone, when I Invited her. "I want < u you to Know him. Hen De crazy j about you. That type of man, big 3 1 and deadly earnest, always falls in f love with your type of girl, the ap- s pealing sort, you know. And he has t ' been too busy, up to now, to know J what love is. But mind, don't hurt him; he's a dear boy. I'm half In s love with him myself, and Dallas 1 trots around his heels like a poodle." a But all Anne's geese are swans, so a I thought little of the Harbison man \ except to hope that he played respec- ^ table bridge, and wouldn't mark the g cards with a steel spring under his f finger nail, as one of her "finds" had \ done. We all arrived about the same time, ^ and Anne and I went up-stairs to- j, gether to take off our wraps in what e had been Bella's dressing room. It was Anne who noticed the violets. r "Look at that!" she nudged me, when the maid was examining her g wrap before she laid it down. "What did I tell you, Kit? He's still quite j mad about her." y Jim had painted Bella's portrait ^ while they were going up the Nile on r their wedding trip. It looked quite t like her, if you stood well off in the middle of the room and if the light came from the right. And just be- t neath it, in a silver vase, was a bunch of violets. It was really touching, p and violets were fabulous. It made ^ me want to cry, and to shake Bella soundly, and to go down and pat Jim t on his generous shoulder, and tell e him what a good fellow I thought him, and that Bella wasn't worth the e dust under his feet. I don't know much about psychology, but it would s be Interesting to know just what ef- a feet those violets and my sympathy for Jim had in influencing my deci- y sion a half-hour later. It is not surn-ioln" nnrler tho rlrrnmstanees. that for some time after the odor* of violets made me ill. We all met down-stairs In the living-room, quite informally, and Dal- p las was banging away at the pianola, tramping the pedals with the dellca- n cy and feeling of a foot-ball centerrush kicking a goal. Mr. Harbison was standing near the fire, a little away from the others, and he was all ^ that Anne had said and more in appearance. He was tall?not too tall, and very straight. And after one got past the oddity of his face being bronze-colored above h's white collar, and of his brown hair being sun- ^ bleached on top until it was almost yellow, one realized that he was very handsome. He had what one might c call a resolute nose and chin, and a pleasant, rather humorous mouth. And he had blue eyes that were, at ^ that moment, wandering with inter- r est over the lot of us. Somebody shouted his name to me above the ? Tristan and Isolde music, and I held ^ out my hand. Instantly I had the feeling one p sometimes has, of having done just that same thing, with the same sur- a roundings, in the same place, years before. I was looking up at him. and v he was staring down at me and holding my hand. And then the music v stopped and he was saying: "Where was it" "Where was what?" I asked. The feeling was stronger than ever witn w his voice. ^ "I beg your pardon," he said, tind ^ let my nanu urop. ~ jusi tor a situmu I had an idea that we had met before somewhere, a long time ago. I suppose?no, it couldn't have happened, s or I should remember." He was smil- c ing half at himself. "No," I smiled back at him. "Jt '' didn't happen, I'm afraid?unless we n dreamed it." "We?" "I felt that way, too, for a mo- * i ment." "The Brushwood Boy!" he said with s conviction. "Perhaps we will find a common dream life, where we knew each other. You remember the i Brushwood Boy loved the girl for c years before they really met." But this was a little too rapid, even for me. v I "Nothing so sentimental, I'm r i afraid," I retorted. "I have had exi actly the same sensation sometimes when I have sneezed." 1 Betty Mercer captured him and c took him off to see Jim's newest pic1 ture. Anne pounced on me at once. s ! "Isn't he delicious?" she demand1 ed. "Did you ever see such shoulI ders? And such a nose? And he 1 : thinks we are parasites, cumberers of c the earth. Heaven knows what. He says every woman ought to know how s to earn her living, in case of necessi- s ty! I said I could make enough at c bridge, and he thought I was joking! t He's a dear!" Anne was enthusiastic. I I looked after him. Oddly enough ' the feeling that we had met before c ' stuck to me. Which was ridiculous, ' of course, for we learned afterward r that the nearest we ever came to c ' meeting was that our mothers had r been school friends! Just then I saw c t Jim beckoning to me crazily from the ' den. He looked quite yellow, and he * I had been running his fingers through t his hair. t "For Heaven's sake, come in Kit!" he said. "I need a cool head. Didn't 1 i I tell you tnis is my caiamuy nay: t "Cook gone?" I asked with interest, f I was starving. s . He closed the door and took up a i tragic attitude in front of the fire. . "Did you ever hear of Aunt Selina?" t he demanded. i i "1 knew there was one," I ventur- i ed. mindful of certain gossip as to j whence Jimmy derived the Wilson in- ?. i come. ] Jim himself was too worried to be \ ? cautious. He waved a brazen hand j 1 at the snug room, at the Japenese ( r prints on the walls, at the rugs, at c i the teakwood cabinets and the screen i 1 inlaid with pearl and ivory. c ? "All this." he said comprehensive- i s )y. "every bite I eat. clothes I wear. 1 i drinks I drink?you needn't look like . - that: I don't drink so darned much? 1 everything comes from Aunt Selina? j t buttons." he finished with a groan. ] "Selina Buttons." I said reflectively. ( t "I don't remember ever having known t ? any one named Buttons, although 1 I ? had a cat once?" i "Damn the cat!" he said rudely, i 'Her name isn't Buttons. Her name I is Caruthers, my Aunt Selina Caruthon/1 mnnatf onnip e from bllt tons." : "Oh!" feebly. "It's an old business," he went on, i ivlth something of proprietary pride, i 'My grandfather founded it in 1775. Made buttons for the Continental army." "Oh, yes," I said. "They melted the < t>uttons to make bullets, didn't they? Dr they melted bullets to make but- I tons? Which was It?" 1 But again he interrupted. ' "It's like this," he went on hur- I rledly. "Aunt Selina believes in me. I She likes pictures, and she wantid me to paint, if I could. I'd have 1 riven up long ago?oh, I know what rou think of my work?but for Aunt < 5elina. She has encouraged me, and i she's done more than that; she's paid 1 he bills." i "Dear Aunt Selina," I breathed. "When I got married," Jim per- 1 sisted, "Aunt Selina doubled my al- < owance. I always expected to sell I something, and begin to make money, ' md in the meantime what she adranced I considered as a loan. He vas eyeing me defiantly, but I was growing serious. It was evident rom the preamble that something i-as coming. "To understand, Kit," he went on ' lubiously, "you would have to know J ter. She won't stand for divorce. 1 She thinks it is a crime." "What!" I sat up. I have always egarded divorce as essentially disagreeable, like castor oil, but necesary. "Oh, you know well enough what 'm driving at," he burst out savage1. "She doesn't know Bella has gone. Ihe thinks I am living In a little donestic heaven, and?she is coming onight to hear me flap my wings." "To-night!" I don't think Jimmy had known hat Dallas Brown had oome in and ras listening. I am sure I had not. fearing his chuckle at the doorway rought us up with a jerk. "Where has Aunt Selina been for he last two or three years?" he askd easily. Jim turned, and his face brlghtend. "Europe. Look here, Dal, you're a mart chap. She'll only be here bout four hours. Can't you think of ome way to get me out of this? I fant to let her down easy, too. I'm nighty fond of Aunt Selina. Can't we ?can't I say Bella has a headache?" "Rotten!" laconically. "Gone out of town?" Jim was desperate. "And you with a houseful of diner guests! Try again, Jim." "I have it," Jim said suddenly. Dallas, ask Anne if she won't play , ostess for to-night. Be Mrs. Wilson j pro tern. Anne would love it. Aunt , ellna never saw Bella. Then, af- . erward, next year, when I'm hung n the Academy and can stand on my . eet"?("Not if you're hung," Dallas . nterjected.)?"I'll break the truth to , er.". \ But Dallas was not enthusiastic. "Anne wouldn't do at all," he de- . lared. "She'd be talking about the ;fds before she knew it, and patting le on the head." He said it comlacently; Anne flirts, but they are eally devoted. "One of the Mercer girls?" I sugested, but Jimmy raised a horrified ^ and. "You don't know Aunt Selina," he j rotested. "I couldn't offer Leila in he gown she's got on, unless she wore shawl, and Betty Is too fair." Anne came In Just then, and the .'hole story had to be told again to er. She was ecstatic. .She said It ,'as good enough for a play, and that f course she would be Mrs. Jimmy or that length of time. "You know," she finished, "If it . ere not for Dal, I would be Mrs. Immy for any length of time. I have | een devoted to you for years, Billl- ] en." But Dallas refused peremptorily. | "I'm not jealous," he explained, , tralghtening and throwing out his hest, "but?well, you don't look the , art, Anne. You're?you are grow- , rig matronly, not but what you suit j ne all right. And then I'd forget j nd call you mammy," which would eqtiire explanation. I think it's up j o you, Kit." 1 "I shall do nothing of the sort!" I napped. "It's ridiculous." i "I dare you!" said Dallas. i I refused. I stood like a rock while he storm surged around me and beat iver me. I must say for Jim that he ] cas merely pathetic. He said that ny happiness was first; that he | could not give me an uncomfortable ninute for anything on earth; and j hat Bella had been perfectly right ] o leave him, because he was a sink- i ng ship, and deserved to be turned f ut penniless Into the world. After i vhleh mixed figure, he poured him- ; elf something to drink, and his lands were shaking. Dal and Anne stood on each side i if him and patted him on the shoullers, and glared across at me. I felt hat if I was a rock, Jim's ship had ] truck on me and was sinking, as he ' aid, because of me. I begun to rumble. > "What?what time does she leave?" ' asked, wavering. "Ten: nine; Kit. are you going to lo it?" "No!" I gave a last clutch at my 1 esolution. "People who do that kind 1 if thing always get Into trouble. She night miss her train. She's almost ertain to miss her train." "You're temporizing." Dallas said iternly. "We won't let her miss her rain; you can be sure of that." "Jim," Anne broke in suddenly, 'hasn't she a picture of Bella? rhere's not the faintest resemblance jetween Bella and Kit." Jim became downcast again. "I sent her a miniature of Bella a couple >f years ago," he said despondently. 'Did it myself." But Dal said he remembered the ( nlnlature, and it looked more like ne than Bella, anyhow. So we were lust where we started. And down inside of me I had a premonition that [ was going to do just what they .vanted me to do. and get into all sorts of trouble, and not be thanked 'or it after all. Which was entirely mrrect. And then I^eila Mercer came slid banged at the door and said that linner had been announced ages ago and that everybody was famishing. tvitn xne nurry ana stress, ana pooi Jim's distracted face, I weakened. "I feel like a cross between an idiot ind a criminal," I said shortly, "and [ don't know particularly why every >ne thinks I should be the victim for he sacrifice. But if you will promise :o get her off early to her train, and f you will stand by me and not leave me alone with her, I?I might try it." It." "Of course, we'll stand by you!" they said in chorus. "We won't let you stick!" And Dal said, "You're the right sort of girl, Kit. And after it's all over, you'll realize that It's the biggest kind of lark. Think how are saving the old lady's feelings! When you are an elderly person yourself, Kit, you will appreciate what you are doing tonight." Yes, they said they would stand by me, and that I was a heroine and the only person there clever enough to act the part, and that they wouldn't let me stick! I am not bitter now, but that is what they promised. Oh, I am not defending myself; I suppose r evprvfhlnc that hannpnpfl ? ?VWV. ? VVI V ? ..vrr?.. But they told me that she would be there only between trains, and that she was deaf, and that I had an opportunity to save a fellow-being from ruin. So In the end I capitulated. When they opened the door into the living room, Max Reed had arrived md was helping to hide a decanter and glasses, and somebody said a cab was it the door. And that was the way it began. CHAPTER III. I Might Have Known It. The minute I Ihad consented I regretLed It. After all, what were Jimmy's troubles to me? Why should I help him mpose on an unsuspecting elderly wonan? And it was only putting off discovery anyhow. Sooner or later, she would learn of the divorce, and? Just it that instant my eyes fell on Mr. Harbison?Tom Harbison, as Anne called him. He was looking on with an imused, half-puzzled smile, while people were rushing around hiding the roulette wheel and things of which Miss Caruthers might disapprove, and Betty Mercer was on her knees winding up a toy bear that Max had brought her. What would he think? It was evident that he thought badly of i? nlreartv?that he was contemutu >usly amused, and then to have to ask nim to lend himself to the deception! With a gasp I hurled myself after Ilmmy, only to hear a strange voice in the hall and to know that I was too late. I was In for it, whatever was toming. It was Aunt Selina who was coming?along the hall, followed by lim, who was mopping his face and :rying not to notice the paralyzed silence in the library. Aunt Selina met me in the doorway. To my frantic eyes she seemed to towjr above us by at least a foot, and bejide her Jimmy was a red, perspiring cherup. "Here she is," Jimmy said, from belind a temporary eclipse of black c oak ind traveling bag. He was on top of Lhe situation now, and he was mendaciously cheerful. He had not said, 'Here is my wife." That would have seen a lie. No, Jimmy merely said, 'Here she is." If Aunt Selina chose !o think me Bella, was it not her responsibility? And if I chose to accept :he situation, was it not mine? Dallas Brown came forward gravely as Aunt Selina folded over and kissed me, and surreptitiously patted me with one land while he held out the other to Miss Caruthers. I loathed him! "We always expect something unusual from James, Miss Caruthers," he said, with his best manner, "but this ?this is beyond our wildest dreams." Well, it's too awful to linger over. \nne took her up-stairs and into Bella's bedroom. It was a fancy of Jim's to leave that room just as Bella Pad left it, dusty dance cards and faI'ors hanging around and a pair of discarded slippers under the bed. I don't Lhink it had been swept since Bella left It. I believe in sentiment, but I like it brushed .and dusted and the cobwebs >ff of it, and when Aunt Selina put lown her bonnet, it stirred up a gray white cloud that made her cough. She did not say anything, but she looked iround the room grimly, and I saw her run her finger over the back of a chair oefore she let Hannah, the maid, put ner cloak on It. Anne looked frightened. She ran Into Bella's bath and wet the end of a towel and when Hannah was changing Aunt Selina's collar?her concession to svening dress?Anne wiped off the obvious places on the furniture. She did It stealthily, but Aunt Selir.a saw her In the glass. "What's that young woman's name?" she asked me sharply, when Anne had taken the towel out to hide it. "Anne Brown, Mrs. Dallas Brown," I replied meekly. Every one replied meekly to Aunt Selina. "Does she live here?' "Oh, no," I said airily. "They are here to dinner, she and her husband. They are old friends of Jim's?and mine." "Seems to have a good eye for dirt," said Aunt Selina and went on fastening her broach. When she was finally ready, she took a bead purse from somewhere about her waist and took out a half dollar. She held it up before Hannah's eyes. "Tomorow morning," she said sternly, "you take off that white cap and that fol-de-rol apron and that black Henrietta cloth, and put on a calico wrapper. And when you've got this room aired and swept, Mrs. Wilson will give you this." Hannah took two steps back and raught hold of a chair; she stared helplessly from Aunt Selina to the half dollar, and then at me. Anne was try "And another thing," Aunt Selina said, from the head of the stairs, "I sent those towels over from Ireland. Tell her to wash and bleach the one Mrs. What's-her-name Brown used as a duster." Anne was quite crushed as we went down the stairs. I turned once, halfway down, and her face was a curious mixture of guilt and hopeless wrath. Over her shoulder, I could see Hannah, wide-eyed and puzzled, staring after us. Jim presented everybody, and then he went into the den and closed the door and we heard him unlock the collarette. Aunt Selina looked at Leila's bare shoulders and said she guessed she didn't take cold easily, and conversation rather languished. Max Reed was looking like a thundercloud, and he came over to me with a lowering expression that I had learned to dread in him. "What fool nonsense is this?" he demanded. "What in the world possessed you, Kit. to put yourself in such an equivocal position? Unless"?he stopped and turned a little white?"unless you are going to marry Jim." I am sory for Max. He is such a nice boy, and good loking, too, if only he were not so fierce, and did not want .? ... m,i matter what lo mane lovr in me. I do, Max always disapproves of it. I have always had a deeply rooted conviction that if I should ever in a weak moment marry Max, he would disapproved of that, too, before I had done it very lonp. "Are you?" he demanded, narrowing his eyes?a sign of unusually bad humor. "Am I what?" "Going to mary him?" "If you mean Jim," I said with dignity, "I haven't made up my mind yet. Besides, he hasn't asked me." Aunt Selina had been talking Woman's Suffrage in front of the fireplace, but now she turned to me. Is this the vase Cousin Jane Whitcomb sent you as a wedding present?" she demanded, indicating a hideous urn-shaped affair on the mantel. It came to me as an inspiration that Jim had once said it was an ancestral urn, so I said without hesitation that it was. And because there was a pause and every one was looking at us, I added that it was a beautiful thing. Aunt Selina sniffed. "H'ideous!" she said. "It looks like Cousin Jane, shape and coloring." Then she looked at it more closely, pounced on it, turned it upside down and shook it. A card fell out, which Dallas picked up and gave her with a bow. Jim had come out of the den and was dancing wildly around and beckoning to me. By the time I had made out that that was not the vase Cousin Jane had sent us as a wedding present, Aunt Selina had examined the card. Then she glared across at me and, stooping, put the card in the fire. I did not understand at all, but I knew I had in some way done the unforgivable thing. Later, Dal told me it was her card, and that she had sent the vase to Jim at Christmas, with a generous check inside. When she straightened from the fireplace, It was to a new theme, which she attacked with her usual vigor. The vase Incident was over, but she never forgot It. She proved that she never did when she sent me two urn-shaped vases with J Paul and Virginia on them, when I? that is, later on. "The cause In England has made . great strides," she announced from the fireplace. "Soon the hand that rocks the cradle will be the hand that actually rules the world." Here she look- ' ed at me. "I'm not up on such things," Max said 1 blandly, having recovered some of his good humor, "but?Isn't. It usually a 1 foot that rocks the cradle?" Aunt Sellna turned on him and Mr. ' Harbison, who were standing together, with a snort. "What have you, or you, ever done for the independence of women?" she ' demanded. 1 Mr. Harbison smiled. He had been 1 looking rather grave until then. "We 1 have at least remained unmarried," he 1 retorted. And then dinner was again 1 announced. He was to take me out, and he came across the room to where I sat col laps- ' ed in a chair, and bent over me. "Do you know," he said, looking 1 down at me with his clear, disconcert- 1 ing gaze, "do you know that I have 1 just grasped the situation? There was such a noise that I did not hear your name, and I am only realizing now 1 that you are my hostess! I don't know why I got the Impression that 1 this was a bachelor establishment, but I did. Odd, wasn't It?' 1 I positively couldn't look away from him. My features seemed frozen, and my eyes were glued to his. As for telling him the truth?well, my tongue ' refused to move. I intended to tell him during dinner If I had an opportunity: I honestly did. But the more I looked at him and saw how candid his eyes 1 were, and how stern his mouth might be, the more I shivered at the plunge. And, of course, as everybody krtows now, I didn't tell him at all. And everybody knows now, I didn't tell him at all. And every moment I expect that awful old woman to ask me what I paid my cook, and when I had chang- i ed the color of my hair?Bella's being black. < Dinner was a half-hour late when we finally went out, Jimmy leading off i with Aunt Selina, and I, as hostess, trailing behind the procession with Mr. Harbison. Dallas took in the two Mercer girls, for we were one man short, and Max took Anne. Leila Mercer was so excited that she wriggled, and as for me, the candles and the orchids?everything?danced around in a circle, and I Just seemed to catch the back of my chair as it flew past. Jim had ordered away the wines and brought out some weak and cheap Chianti. Dallas looked gloomily at the change, but Jim explained in an undertone that Aunt Selina didn't approve of expensive vintages. Naturally, the meal was glum enough. Aunt Selina had had her dinner on the train, so she spent her time in asking me questions the length of the table, and in getting acquainted with me. She had brought a bottle of some sort of medicine down-stairs with her, and she took a claret-glassful, while she talked. The stuff was called Pomona: shall I ever forget It? It was Mr. Harbison who first noticed Takahlro. Jimmy's Jap had been the only thing In the menage , that Bella declared she had hatea to leave. But he was doing the strangest things: his little black eyes shifted nervously, and he looked queer. "What's wrong with him?" Mr. Harbison asked me finally, when he saw that I noticed. "Is he 111?" Then Aunt Sellna's voice from the , other end of the table: , "Bella," she called, in a high shrill tone, "do you let James eat cucum- , bers?" i "I think he must be," I said hur- i rledly aside to Mr. Harbison. "See i how his hands shake!" But Aunt ] Selina would not be ignored. "Cucumbers and strawberries," she ; repeated impressively. "I was saying, i Bella, that cucumbers have always given James the most fearful Indiges- i tlon. And yet I see you serve them i at your table. Do you remember j what I wrote you to give him when he Mas his dreadful spells?" I I .vas quite speechless; every one i was looking, and no one could help, s It was dear Jim was racking his brain, ard we sat staring desperately 1 at each ?ther across the candles. Ev- i erything I had ever known faded from me; eight pairs of eyes bored < Into me, Mr. Harbison's politely i amused. ' "I don't remember," I said at last. "Really, I don't believe?" Aunt Se- 1 Una smiled In a superior way. < "Now, don't you recall it?" she In- 1 sisted. "I said: 'Baking soda in water taken Internally for cucumbers; I baking soda in water externally, rub- < bed on, when he gets that dreadful, itching strawberry rash.'" I believe the dinner went on. Somebody asked Aunt Sellna how ' much over-charge she had paid In ' foreign hotels, and after that she was as harmless as a dove. Then half-way through the dinner ' we heard a crash in Takahiro's pantry, and when he did not appear again, Jim got up and went oui to investigate. He was gone quite a little | svhile, and when he came back he ooked worried. "Sick," he replied to our inquiring ?lances. "One of the maids will come in. They have sent for a doctor." Aunt Selina was for going out at jnce and "tlxing him up," as she put t, but Dallas gently Interfered. "l wouicin i, xviiss taruinera, ne ?ald, In the deferential manner he had adopted toward her. "You don't know what It may be. He's been looking spotty all evening." "It might be scarlet fever," Max broke in cheerfully. "I say. scarlet fever on a Mongolian?what color would he be, Jimmy What do yellow and red make? Green?" "Orange," Jim said shortly. "I wish you people would remember that we are trying to eat." The fact was, however, that no jne was really eating, except Mr. Haralson, who had given up trying to unlerstand us, considering, no doubt, aur subdued excitement as our normal condition. Ages afterward I earned that he thought my face almost tragic that night, and that he supposed, from the way I glared across the table, that I had quarreled with my husband! "I am afraid you are not well," he said at last, noticing my food untouched on my plate. "We should lot have come, any of us." "I am perfectly well," I replied feverishly. "I am never 111. I?I ate i late luncheon." He glanced at me keenly. "Don't let them stay and play bridge toilght," he urged. "Miss Caruthers ean be an excuse, can she not? And you are really fagged. You look It." "I think It is only 111 humor," I said, looking directly at him. "I am angry at myself. I Iiave done something silly, and I hate to be silly." Max would have said "Impossible," or something else trite. The Harbison man looked at me with Interested, serious eyes. "Is it too late to undo It?" he asked. 1 And then and there I determined that he should never know the truth. He could go back to South America and build bridges and make love to the Spanish girls (or are they Spanish down there?) and think of me always as a married woman, married to a dilettante artist, Inclined to be stout ?the artist, not I?and with an Aunt Selina Caruthers who made buttons and believed In the Cause. But never, never should he think of me as a silly little fool who pretended that she was the other man's wife and had a lump in her throat because when a really nice man came along, a man who knew something more than polo and motors, she had to carry on the deception to keep his respect, and be sedate and matronly, and see him change from perfectly open admiration at first to a hands-olT-she-is-myhost's-wlfe attitude at last. "It can never be undone," I said soberly. Well, that's the picture as nearly as I can draw it: a round table with a low centerpiece of orchids in lavenders and pink, old silver candlesticks with filigree shades against the somber wainscoting; nine people, two of them unhappy?Jim and I; one of them complacent?Aunt Selina; one puzzled?Mr. Harbison; and the rest hysterically mirthful. Add one sick Japanese butler and grind in the mills of the gods. Every one promptly forgot Takahiro in the excitement of the game v:e were all playing. Finally, however, Aunt Selina, who seemed to have Takahiro on her mind, looked up from her plate. "That Jap was speckled," she asserted. "I wouldn't be surprised if It's measles. Has he been sniffling, James?" "Has he been snifflin?g" Jim threw across at me. "I hadn't noticed it," I said meekly, while the others choked. Max came to the rescue. "She refused to eat it," he explained, distinctly and to everybody, apropos absolutely of nothing. "It said on the box, 'ready cooked and predigested.' She declared she didn't care who cooked It, but she wanted to know who predigested it." As every one wanted to laugh, every one did it then, and under cover of the noise I caught Anne's eye, and we left the dining room. The men stayed, and by the very firmness with which the door closed behind us, I knew that Dallas and Max were bringing out the bottles that Hakahiro had hidden. 1 was seething. When Aunt Selina indicated a desire to go over the house (it was natural that she should want to: It was her house, in a way) I excused myself for.a minute and ttew back to the dining room. It was as I had expected. Jim hadn't cheered perceptibly, and the rest were patting him on the back, and pouring things out for him, and saying, "Poor old Jim" in the most maddening way. And the Harblnson man was looking more and more puzzled, and not at all hilarious. I descended on them like a thunderbolt. "That's it!" I cried shrewishly, with my back against the door. "Leave her to me, all of you, and pat each other on the back, and say it's gone splendidly! Oh, I know you, every one!" Mr. Harbison got up and pulled out a chair, but I couldn't sit; I folded my arms on the back. "After a while, I suppose, you'll slip up-stairs, the four of you, and have your game." They looked guilty. "But I will block that _!_!.? ?... t am cninir to stav?here. 11*111. huh. c.... r, ? ? . If Aunt Sellna wants me, she can find me?here!" The first Indication those men had that Mr. Harbison didn't know the 3tate of affairs was when he turned and faced them. "Mrs. Wilson is quite right," he said gravely. "We're a selfish lot. If Miss Caruthers is a responsibility, let us .hare her." "To arms!" Jim said, with an affection of lightness, as they put their glasses down, and threw open the door. Dai's retort, "Whose?" was lost in the confusion, and we went into the library. On the way Dallas managed to 3peak to me. "If Harbison doesn't know, don't tell him," he said in an undertone. "He's a lueer duck, in some ways; he mightn't think it funny." "Funny," I choked| "It's the least funny thing I ever experienced. Deceiving that Harbison man isn't so bad ?he thinks me crazy, anyhow. He's been staring his eyes out at me?" "I don't wonder. You're really lovely tonight, Kit, and you look like a vixen." "But to deceive that harmless old lady?well, thank goodness, it's nine, and she leaves in an hour or so." But she didn't. And that's the story. To be Continued. .j tW If at first you don't succeed, try from some other direction. iltiaccUancous grading. BAGDAD BARGAINS. Fascinating Bazaars of a City of tha East. If Market street cars gave transfers to Bagdad, and an alert San Francisco woman could step off, shopping bag in hand, some flne morning and suddenly find herself In the midst of Bagdad's ancient bazaars?Oh, my, what joy! I had such luck; and. excepting one or two wandering mis 8lo mrles, I am the only American woman, I believe, who has ever lived In Bagdad. True, I didn't come all the way on a street car transfer; but I did find myself, after two months' travel, in mysterious old Bagdad, and ever since the bazaars have held me In their thrall. And these vast, mystic marts flourish today just as they did In the long ago, when Marco Polo did his holiday shopping here and sent gold woven shawls home to dark-eyed damsels In the land of spaghetti. And this same Mark P. was no mere mad tourist, rushing through the east for new sensations and scenery. He was the real, original bargain hunter, and says In his travels that he found the Bagdad bazaars the "bargain hunter's paradise." And so they seem to me today. I ' know Toklo's marvellous markets, the famous "walled city" of Shanghai; "Pipe street" in Pekln has pried money loose from me, and Bombay's offerings have taken toll. But to Bagdad's bazaars I hand the palm. To enter is to come out penniless. There is so much to buy, and each tempting bargain seems dirt cheap. Think of hand-hammered flnger bowls at ten piastres (11 cents) each, and all solid brass; or, long, full ostrich plumes selling for $1.26?the kind you pay Market street milliners 920 for. Of course, these here are gray with desert dust and look droopy and whipped out, just as they were when snatched from the tall of the fleetfooted fowl, which was probably glad to get away with only the loss of her tail feathers. But cleaning and dyeing primp them up as we see them when sold for fifteen or twenty times the local price. So it is with silks? they sell here for one-third of home prices. And all these with never a "fire" or "clearance" sign to remind one of special sales or any of the bargain hunting scrambles we know at , home. "They're doing business In the same old way in Bagdad, just as they did in the days of the Arabian Nights, when Haroun-al-Raschid and his favorite wife, Zobeida, strolled out together for a merry evening in the coffee houses. The shops hold just as many wonders. No lady-killing floor-walkers, no moving stairways or "Pompelan rom" luxuries greet the buyers of wares in the Bagdad bazaars; here are no super-civilized seductions of the Yankee department store type, ttut an arquna passes a "moving picture" show of quaint and curious Interest. Alexander the Great, Herodotus and all the early kings of Babylon were familiar figures in the bazaars of these early Mesopotamian towns. One can almost Imagine old Nebuchadnezzar sauntering up to a corner cigar store in Bagdad, carelessly playing the B. C. slot machine and asking innocently for election news from the Pharaoh campaigns in Egypt. King Solomon, wise as he was, is reputed to have spent a lot of money foolishly in Bagdad buying knickknacks for the capricious Queen of Sheba. i The streets are barely ten feet wide, mud cakes laid on mats and poles, to shut out the awful, soul-destrojdng heat of f.ummer?sometimes 125 or ' 130 Fahrenheit. Along each side are the stalls, or booths. At night they lock them up, with door made of nail-studded slabs fastened with ponderous locks and keys a foot long. In galleries leading off from the main aisle work the artisans and craftsmen. Here are over three hundred shoemakers, hammering away on red and blue leathered boots. Beyond are the fancy belt makers, and then a fez merchant (though most fezzes are now made in Austria). Then we reach the booth of those who vend spears, swords and other cutlery of the battlefield. And every one we meet wears the red shoes, the toes turned up like the bow of an Indian canoe. This next merchant sells , "Abbas"?the long flowing, graceful , cloaks which all Bagdad like to wear. And here are camels' trappings, all ' red and resplendent with bead and shell work. In bargaining one is struck with the peculiar temperament of the Arab merchant. Argument seems a dissi1 pation with him. A man selling an : old, moth-eaten and wind-broken I camel worth probably 14.87, will spend as much energy, use up as 1 much talk and fling out as many beautiful descriptive adjectives as the auctioneer a little further along who is asking bids for an Arab horse wortn $1,000. And all around the strife for life keeps up. A boy of six selling sweets, made from date Juice and pistache nuts, and screams in shrill voice the merits of his sticky, fly-catching mess. A persian pilgrim, stranded far from that dear Teheran, is offering for sale a beautiful antique rug, worth $100 on Fifth avenue; he asks thirty medjldies?$26. I have relieved his distress, and shall place the Persian rug among my souvenirs of this sojourn in Bagdad. With it I have a tear-bottle, which I myself picked up among the sandy, wind-blown ruins of ancient Babylon. Mourners cried in these bottles and burled them in the grave with the body of the departed. And I have a red seal, with a lion-like creature engraved on it, which was found at Nlffer, where the University of Pennsylvania once had an excavating 'party. I shall make a ring of my find. Silversmiths are clever here, as all over the East. These at Bagdad keep shop in small, narrow recesses, so built that in case of riots or invasions of the town they can quickly lock up shop and leave their wares safe from harm. They made me a dozen coffee spoons, with coins for bowls, all silver, for $2.40.?San Francisco Chronicle. Lion Remembers Former Trainer. Of all young women in the country. Miss Ruby Roberts of Chicago probably has chosen the most unique meth- . od of spending her two weeks' vacation, for she is traveling as the guest of Leo, the big Abyssinian lion with Ringling Brothers' circus. One evening recently in Indianapolis crowds in the menagerie of the show were startled by the roaring of one of the lions and a few moments later were amazed to see a woman in street dress enter the cage. Instantly the great beast was at her feet, purring like a kitten while she patted him on the head and fondled him as though he were a St. Bernard. The lion and the woman were old friends. Ten years ago, under the name of Mile. Dorainne. Miss Roberts was a trainer for Ringling Brothers. The meeting with her old pet had been entirely by chance, and the recognition came from the lion. The woman was passing the cage when Leo opened his sleepy eyes and recognized his old mistress. He leaped to his feet and thrust Ins his paws through the bars roared the greeting that attracted her attention. Charles Smith, superintendent of the menagerie, induced "the general manager to allow Miss Roberts to spend the balance of her vacation with the show.?Pittsburg Dispatch.