He was silly enough to do it, and I let him." "Did--did he say--" "I don't know what he said; I was all nerves--confused--scared--a perfect stick in fact! ...

I don't believe he'd care to try again." Then Mrs.Ferrall deliberately settled down in her furs to extract from the girl beside her every essential detail; and the girl, frank at first, grew shy and silent--reticent enough to worry her friend into a silence which lasted a long while for a cheerful little matron of her sort.
Presently they spoke of other matters--matters interesting to pretty women with much to do in the coming winter between New York, Hot Springs, and Florida; surmises as to dinners, dances, and the newcomers in the younger sets, and the marriages to be arranged or disarranged, and the scandals humanity is heir to, and the attitude of the bishop toward divorce.
And the new pavillion to be built for Saint Berold's Hospital, and the various states of the various charities each was interested in, and the chances of something new at the opera, and the impossibility of saving Fifth Avenue from truck traffic, and the increasing importance of Washington as a social centre, and the bad manners of a foreign ambassador, and the better manners of another diplomat, and the lack of discrimination betrayed by our ambassador to a certain great Power in choosing people for presentation at court, and the latest unhappy British-American marriage, and the hopelessness of the French as decent husbands, and the recent accident to the Claymores' big yacht, and the tendency of well-born young men toward politics, and the anything but distinguished person of Lord Alderdene, which was, however, vastly superior to the demeanour and person of others of his rank recently imported, and the beauty of Miss Caithness, and the chance that Captain Voucher had if Leila Mortimer would let him alone, and the absurdity of the Page twins, and the furtive coarseness of Leroy Mortimer and his general badness, and the sadness of Leila Mortimer's lot when she had always been in love with other people,--and a little scandalous surmise concerning Tom O'Hara, and the new house on Seventy-ninth Street building for Mrs.Vendenning, and that charming widow's success at last year's horse show--and whether the fashion of the function was reviving, and whether Beverly Plank had completely broken into the social sets he had besieged so long, or whether a few of the hunting and shooting people merely permitted him to drive pheasants for them, and why Katharyn Tassel made eyes at him, having sufficient money of her own to die unwed, and--and--and then, at last, as the big motor car swung in a circle at Wenniston Cross-Roads, and poked its brass and lacquer muzzle toward Shotover, the talk swung back to Siward once more--having travelled half the world over to find him.
"He is the sweetest fellow with his mother," sighed Grace; "and that counts heavily with me.

But there's trouble ahead for her--sorrow and trouble enough for them both, if he is a true Siward." "Heredity again!" said Sylvia impatiently.

"Isn't he man enough to win out?
I'll bet you he settles down, marries, and--" "Marries?
Not he! How many girls do you suppose have believed that--were justified in believing he meant anything by his attractive manner and nice ways of telling you how much he liked you?
He had a desperate affair with Mrs.Mortimer--innocent enough I fancy.

He's had a dozen within three years; and in a week Rena Bonnesdel has come to making eyes at him, and Eileen gives him no end of chances which he doesn't see.