Promptly at four that afternoon Blake was shown to the rooms of his friend at the hotel. He entered with a glum look not altogether assumed.

"Well, here I am," he grumbled. "Hope you're satisfied. You're robbing me of the best part of the day."

"I daresay," cheerfully assented Lord James. "Now look pleasant till I see if you're dressed."

"No, I haven't a thing on. Just clothed in sunshine and a sweet smile," growled Blake, throwing open his raincoat to show his suit of rough gray homespun. "You don't ever get me into that skirty coat again. I can stand full dress, but not that afternoon horror-gown. I'm no minister."

"Don't fash yourself, old man. At least you've been tailored in London, and that's something. You'll do—in Chicago."

"I'll do O.K. right here," said Blake. "What say? You've spoiled my afternoon. We'll call it quits if you settle down with me and put in the time chinning about things."

"Tammas, I'm shocked at you," reproved Lord James. "You cannot wish to disappoint Mrs. Gantry, really!"

"Mrs. Gantry be—"

"No, no! Do not say it, my deah Tammas! When one is in Society, y'know, one is privileged to think it, but it's bad form to express it so—ah—broadly—ah—I assure you."

He adjusted his monocle and stared with a vacuous blandness well calculated to madden his friend. Blake hurled a magazine, which his lordship deftly sidestepped. He reached for his hat, and faced Blake with boyish eagerness.

"Come on, Tom. Chuck the rotting. We're wasting time."

"Must have a taxicab waiting for you," bantered Blake.

"No, a young lady. Miss Dolores is really eager to become acquainted with you, and—er—she may have a friend or two—"

"Excuse me!"

"Tammas the quitter!"

Lord James started for the door, and Blake followed him, striving hard to maintain his surly look. At the street entrance he sought to postpone the coming ordeal by urging his need for exercise.

"Don't worry. I'll pay," said Lord James, pretending to misunderstand, and he raised his finger to the chauffeur of the nearest cab. "You can walk home, if you wish to save pennies. Now, you know, we desire to reach Mrs. Gantry's as soon as possible."

"Yes, we do!" growled Blake.

He seemed more than ever determined to remain in his glum mood, and the pleasant badinage of his friend during their run out to Lincoln Park Boulevard rather increased than lessened his surliness. When they entered through the old Colonial portal of the Gantry home, he jerked off his English topcoat unaided, contemptuously spurning the assistance of the buff-and-yellow liveried footman. But as they were announced, he assumed what Lord James termed his "poker face," and entered beside his friend, with head well up and shoulders squared.

"Good boy! Keep it up," murmured Lord James. "She'll take you for a distinguished personage."

Blake spoiled the effect by a grin, which, an instant later, was transformed into a radiant smile at sight of Genevieve beside Mrs. Gantry.

Dolores came darting to meet them, her black eyes sparkling and her lithe young body aquiver with animation.

"Oh, Lord Avondale!" she cried. "So you did make him come. Mr. Blake, why didn't you call at once?"

"Wasn't asked," answered Blake, his eyes twinkling.

"You are now. So please remember to come often. Never fear mamma. I'll protect you. Oh, I'm just on tiptoe to see you in those skin things you wore in Africa. I made Vievie put on her leopard-skin gown, and I think it's the most terrible romantic thing! And now I'm just dying to see your hyena-skin trousers and those awful poisoned arrows and—"

"Dolores!" admonished Mrs. Gantry.

"Oh, piffle!" complained the girl, drawing aside for the men to pass her.

Even Mrs. Gantry was not equal to the rudeness of snubbing a caller in her own house—when she had given an earl permission to bring him. But the contrast between her greetings of the two men was, to say the least, noticeable.

Blake met her supercilious bearing toward him with an impassiveness that was intended to mask his contemptuous resentment. But Genevieve saw and understood. She rose and quietly remarked: "You'll excuse us, Aunt Amice. I wish Mr. Blake to see the palm room. I fancy it will carry him back to Mozambique."

Mrs. Gantry's look said that she wished Mr. Blake could be carried back to Mozambique and kept there. Her tongue said: "As you please, my dear. Yet I should have thought you'd had quite enough of Africa for a lifetime."

"One never can tell," replied Genevieve with a coldness that chilled the glow in Blake's eyes.

They went out side by side yet perceptibly constrained in their bearing toward one another.

Dolores flung herself across the room and into a chair facing her mother and Lord James.

"Did you see that?" she demanded. "I do believe Vievie is the coldest blooded creature! When she knows he's just dying for love of her! Why, I never—"

"That will do!" interrupted Mrs. Gantry.

"I'll leave it to Lord Avondale. Isn't it the exact truth?"

"Er—he still looks rather robust," parried Lord James.

"You know what I mean. But I didn't think she'd behave in this dog-in-the-manger fashion. She might have at least given me a chance for a tete-a-tete with him, even if he is her hero."

"I am only too well aware what Lord Avondale will think of you, going on in this silly way," observed Mrs. Gantry.

"If Lord Avondale doesn't like me and my manners, he needn't. Need you,
Mr. Scarbridge?"

"But how can I help liking you?" asked the young Englishman with such evident sincerity that the girl was disconcerted. She flashed a bewildered glance into his earnest face, and turned quickly away, her cheeks scarlet with confusion.

"Ah, Earl," purred her mother, "I fully appreciate your kindness. She is Genevieve's cousin. You are therefore pleased to disregard her gaucheries."

"Ho! so that's it?" retorted Dolores. "Lord Avondale needn't trouble to disregard anything about me."

"Believe me, I do not, Miss Gantry," replied Lord James. "I find you most charming."

"Because I'm Vievie's cousin! Well, if you wish to know what I think, I think all Englishmen are simply detestable!" cried the girl, and she sprang up and flounced away, her face crimson with anger.

"You had better go straight to your room," reproved her mother.

The girl promptly dodged the doorway for which she was headed, and veered around to a window, where she turned her back on them and perched herself on the arm of a chair.

Mrs. Gantry sighed profoundly. "A-a-ah! Was ever a mother so tried!
Such temper, such perversity! Her father, all over again!"

"If you'll permit me to offer a suggestion," ventured Lord James, "may it not be that you drive with rather too taut a rein?"

"Too taut! Can you not see? The slightest relaxation, and I should have a runaway."

"But a little freedom to canter? It's this chafing against the bit. So high spirited, you know. I must confess, it's that which I find most charming about her."

"Impossible! You cannot realize."

"Then, too, her candor—one of the rarest and most admirable traits in a woman."

"Simply terrible! That she should fling her—opinion of you in your face!"

"Better that than the usual insincerity in such cases of dislike. It gives me reason to hope that eventually I can win her friendship."

"Your kindness is more than I can ever repay!"

"You can by granting me a single favor."

"Indeed?" Mrs. Gantry raised her eyebrows in high arches.

"By receiving my friend as my friend."

"Ah! Had you not asked permission to bring him, he would not have been received at all."

"Not even as the man who saved your niece?"

"That is an obligation to be discharged by her father."

"I see. Very well, then. Regarding him simply as my friend, I ask you to consider that he is undergoing a most difficult, I may say, cruel test. He must overcome something that he has vainly fought for years—something that has crushed many of the greatest intellects the world has known."

"The more reason for me to save Genevieve from ruin. From what you say,
I imply that it is a hopeless case of degeneracy."

"Not hopeless; and degenerate in that respect alone—if you must insist on the term."

"I do insist."

"What if he should succeed in overcoming it?"

"He cannot. Even should he seem to, there will always be a weakness to be feared."

"Is that just?"

"It is just to Genevieve."

"Everything for Vievie, coronet included!" called Dolores over her shoulder.

Mrs. Gantry's English complexion deepened to the purple of mortification. The frank smile that told of his lordship's enjoyment of her discomfiture was the last straw. She rose in her stateliest manner.

"I shall leave you a few moments to be entertained by the dear child, since you find her so amusing," she said. "Genevieve must not be permitted to remain too long in the close hot air of the palm room."

"There's some hot air outside the conservatory, mamma," remarked
Dolores.

But Mrs. Gantry sailed majestically from the room, without deigning to heed the pleasantry.

Lord James sauntered across to the window and perched himself on a chair arm close before the girl.

"When do you begin?" he asked. "Your mamma said you were to entertain me."

"Best possible reason why I shouldn't," she snapped, staring hard out of the window.

"What if I should try to entertain you?"

"You wouldn't succeed. I wanted to talk to a man. It's too bad! Simply because you asked me to, I was silly enough to tease Vievie into coming over this afternoon—and the minute he comes, she rushes him off to the conservatory."

"Believe me, I regret quite as keenly that she did not take me instead."

"That's complimentary—to me!"

"Can you blame me for agreeing, when you express a preference for the man instead of the mere son of a duke?"

"Perhaps you're a man yourself. Who knows?"

"Quien sabe, Senorita Dolores?" he rallied her. "Tell me how to prove it."

She flashed him a glance of naive coquetry. "You ask how? If I were my great grandmother, you might try to kiss me, and chance a stiletto thrust in return."

"Your great grandmother was an Italian?"

The girl's red lips curled disdainfully. "No, she was Spanish. Though she lived in Mexico, her family were Castilian and related to the royal Valois family of France. So you see how far back it goes. We have the journal of her husband. She married Dr. Robinson, who accompanied Lieutenant Pike on his famous expedition."

"Pike? Leftenant Pike?"

"No, he wasn't 'left.' He came back and became the General Pike who died at the moment of his glorious victory over the English, in the War of 1812."

"Ah, come to think—Pike of Pike's Peak. Never heard of the battle you mention; but as an explorer—So one of his companions married your ancestress?"

"Yes. He must have been another such man as Mr. Blake."

"The kind to risk stiletto thrusts for kisses?"

"Yes. I know I must be exactly like her—that haughty Senorita
Alisanda."

"Indeed, yes. I can almost see her dagger up your sleeve."

The girl's black eyes flashed fire. "If it was there, you'd get a good scratch!"

"Believe me," he apologized, "you quite failed to take me."

"It's no question of taking you. I prefer heroes."

"Can't say I blame you. You've all the fire and charm of a Spanish girl, and, permit me to add, the far greater charm of an American girl."

She looked to see if he was mocking her. Finding him unaffectedly sincere, she promptly melted into a most amiable and vivacious though unconventional debutante.