to rush off somewhere else. So he had remained without a key to her transitions, and had had to take for granted numberless things that seemed to have no parallel in the experience of the other boys he knew.

"Here-here it is," said Mrs. Heeny, adjusting the big tortoiseshell spectacles she had taken to wearing, and reading out in a slow chant that seemed to Paul to come out of some lost remoteness of his infancy.

"It is reported in London that the price paid by Mr. Elmer Moffatt for the celebrated Grey Boy is the largest sum ever given for a Vandyck. Since Mr. Moffatt began to buy extensively it is estimated in art circles that values have gone up at least seventy-five per cent.'

But the price of the Grey Boy did not interest Paul, and he said a little impatiently: "I'd rather hear about my mother."

"To be sure you would! You wait now." Mrs. Heeny made another dive, and again began to spread her clippings on her lap like cards on a big black table. "Here's one about her last portrait-no, here's a better one about her pearl necklace, the one Mr. Moffatt gave her last Christmas. 'The necklace, which was formerly the property of an Austrian Archduchess, is composed of five hundred perfectly matched pearls that have taken thirty years to collect. It is estimated among dealers in precious stones that since Mr. Moffatt began to buy the price of pearls has gone up over fifty per cent.'" Even this did not fix Paul's attention. He wanted to hear about his mother and Mr. Moffatt, and not about their things; and he didn't quite know how to frame his question. But Mrs. Heeny looked kindly at him and he tried. "Why is mother married to Mr. Moffatt now?"

"Why, you must know that much, Paul." Mrs. Heeny again looked warm and worried. "She's married to him because she got a divorce-that's why." And suddenly she had another inspiration. "Didn't she ever send you over any of those splendid clippings that came out the time they were married? Why, I declare, that's a shame; but I must have some of 'em right here."

She dived again, shuffled, sorted, and

pulled out a long discoloured strip. "I've carried this round with me ever since, and so many's wanted to read it, it's all torn." She smoothed out the paper and began:

"Divorce and remarriage of Mrs. Undine Spragg-de Chelles. American Marquise renounces ancient French title to wed Railroad King. Quick work untying and tying. Boy and girl romance renewed.

"Sioux Falls, November 23d. The Marquise de Chelles, of Paris, France, formerly Mrs. Undine Spragg Marvell, of Apex City and New York, got a decree of divorce at a special session of the Court last night, and was remarried fifteen minutes later to Mr. Elmer Moffatt, the billionaire Railroad King, who was the Marquise's first husband.

"No case has ever been railroaded through the divorce courts of this State at a higher rate of speed: as Mr. Moffatt said last night, before he and his bride jumped onto their east-bound special, every record has been broken. It was just six months ago yesterday that the present Mrs. Moffatt came to Sioux Falls to look for her divorce. Owing to a delayed train, her counsel was late yesterday in receiving some necessary papers, and it was feared the decision would have to be held over; but Judge Toomey, who is a personal friend of Mr. Moffatt's, held a night session and rushed it through so that the happy couple could have the knot tied and board their special in time for Mrs. Moffatt to spend Thanksgiving in New York with her aged parents. The hearing began at seven ten p. m. and at eight o'clock the bridal couple were steaming out of the station.

"At the trial Mrs. Spragg-de Chelles, who wore copper velvet and sables, gave evidence as to the brutality of her French husband, but she had to talk fast as time pressed, and Judge Toomey wrote the entry at top speed, and then jumped into a motor with the happy couple and drove to the Justice of the Peace, where he acted as best man to the bridegroom. The latter is said to be one of the six wealthiest men east of the Rockies. His gifts to the bride are a necklace and tiara of pigeonblood rubies belonging to Queen Marie Antoinette, a million dollar cheque and a house in New York. The happy pair

than his mother; but at that instant he felt a rage of hate for him. He turned away and burst into tears.

Why, hullo, old chap-why, what's up?" Mr. Moffatt was on his knees beside the boy, and the arms embracing him were firm and friendly. But Paul, for the life of him, couldn't answer: he could only sob and sob as the great surges of loneliness broke over him.

"Is it because your mother hadn't time for you? Well, she's like that, you know; and you and I have got to lump it," Mr. Moffatt continued, getting to his feet. He stood looking down at the boy with a queer smile. "If we two chaps stick together it won't be so bad-we can keep each other warm, don't you see? I like you first rate, you know; when you're big enough I mean to put you in my busiAnd it looks as if one of these days you'd be the richest boy in America..."

ness.

The lamps were lit, the vases full of flowers, the footmen assembled on the landing and in the vestibule below, when Undine descended to the drawing-room. As she passed the ballroom door she glanced in approvingly at the tapestries. They really looked better than she had been willing to admit: they made her ballroom the handsomest in Paris. But something had put her out on the way up from Deauville, and the simplest way of easing her nerves had been to affect indifference to the tapestries. Now she had quite recovered her good humour, and as she glanced down the list of guests she was awaiting she said to herself, with a sigh of satisfaction, that she was glad she had put on her rubies.

For the first time since her marriage to Moffatt she was about to receive in her house the people she most wished to see there. The beginnings had been a little difficult; their first attempt in New York was so unpromising that she feared they might not be able to live down the sensational details of their reunion, and in sisted on her husband's taking her back to Paris. But her apprehensions were unfounded. It was only necessary to give people the time to pretend they had forgotten; and already they were all pretending beautifully. The French world had of course held out longest; it had

strongholds she might never capture. But already seceders were beginning to show themselves, and her dinner-list that evening was graced with the names of an authentic Duke and a not too damaged Countess. In addition, of course, she had the Shallums, the Chauncey Ellingers, May Beringer, Dicky Bowles, Walsingham Popple, and the rest of the New York frequenters of the Nouveau Luxe; she had even, at the last minute, had the amusement of adding Peter Van Degen to their number. In the evening there was to be Spanish dancing and Russian singing; and Dicky Bowles had promised her a Grand Duke for her next dinner, if she could secure the new tenor who always refused to sing in private houses.

Even now, however, she was not always happy. She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them. And there had been moments lately when she had been obliged to confess to herself that Moffatt did not fit into the picture. At first she had been dazzled by his success and subdued by his authority. He had given her all she had ever wished for, and more than she had ever dreamed of having: he had made up to her for all her failures and her blunders, and there were hours when she still felt his dominion and exulted in it. But there were others when she saw his defects and was irritated by them: when his loudness and redness, his misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating swagger and ceremony with her friends, jarred on perceptions that had developed in her unawares. Now and then she caught herself thinking that his two predecessors who were gradually becoming merged in her memorywould have said this or that differently, behaved otherwise in such and such a case.

And the comparison was almost always to Moffatt's disadvantage.

This evening, however, she thought of him indulgently. She was pleased with his clever stroke in capturing the Saint Désert tapestries, which General Arlington's sudden bankruptcy, and a fresh gambling scandal of Hubert's, had compelled their owner to part with. She knew that Raymond de Chelles had told the dealers he would sell his tapestries to any one but

M

ISS PARMALEE was forty -unfortunately or fortunately, as you choose to look at it, for she never bothered her head about it herself but she was neither fat nor yet very fair. She was of a comfortable plumpness, and, in the eyes of her favorite nephew, "the corkingest aunt going." Having made up her mind to "taste the romance of the Spanish Main," she had promptly decided to visit the nephew, and, after long study of the map of Central America in her atlas, had actually located his present abiding-place and set out.

After a lifetime of New York-she was a born New Yorker, though science tells us it is an extinct species-and a more or less thorough knowledge of the well-travelled routes, the tubby little San Miguel was a shock, and the distinct flavor of garlic in the romance she had so far collected was a further one. But the spirit of romance dies hard, even in the young, and when one is forty and romantic it is unconquerable.

The first little port the wallowing old fruit-steamer reached revived her, and the gaudily painted houses, the brownskinned boatmen, and the overplump native beauties who travelled from port to port were almost equal to what she had imagined. But her greatest interest was for the occasional Americans who boarded and left the ship as she trundled her leisurely way down the coast. Lean, brownfaced men they were, for the most part, clad in khaki or white drill, living in unpronounceable places and doing most interesting things.

The little Irish ship's doctor, who for once found his duties as entertainer of the feminine passengers a pleasure instead of a bore, carefully sorted the goats from the sheep and presented the small remainder to her at every port. That these strangely old young men thought

themselves and their lives dull and uninteresting was an added delight to her, and she told them so-so that the blushed and then told her their inmost longings. She was that sort.

It did not seem strange to her that a tall, quiet-eyed young engineer (the doctor told her confidentially that he was known on the coast as "Mule" Sutton, because a certain foreman had likened the weight of his fist to that useful animal's foot) had always wanted to be an author, and entertained weird theories of the supernatural along with a childlike belief in the efficacy of prayer.

Nor did it startle her when the doctor said that a pink-faced little Irishman, who had talked entertainingly and regretfully about the restaurants of New York and Paris, had once held an abandoned house alone against a hundred blood-crazed revolutionists-and had later calmly sold out his (previously) respected chief for four thousand dollars.

It was in Puerto Barrios that she saw Seabright. She liked him, she thought— he was tall and brown and straight, as a man ought to be. He had good shoulders, and his khaki breeches were well cut. His blue eyes were steady and clear, the mouth under the close-cut fair mustache was firm, and the line of his jaw was most uncommonly square.

He shook hands laughingly with the doctor, and returned to the friends who were seeing him off. Miss Parmalee liked their talk-it was what she had thought men said in these Spanish places.

"Who is he?" she asked the doctor when her guide and counsellor settled down beside her. "That tall young man in khaki?"

"That? That's Jack Seabright, and a good sort, too. I'll bring him up presently, when he's shifted. He's going to Santa Marta, too, where your nephew is, and you'll like him."