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 "Susie's out, I'm afraid," said her mother, in a tone politely false.

"Oh no, she's not!" said he, and, stepping to the door, he opened it and shouted at the top of a good pair of lungs, "Susie!"

"That is impertinent," observed Mrs. Rolles, more as a critic of manners than as an outraged parent.

"Our modern efficiency," answered Bevans, and then suddenly lost all his lightness of touch as Susie entered.

She was the sort of young woman about whom ideals easily cluster, for she was pretty, pale, and almost totally non-committal. Some people believed her to be simply unawakened; others cherished the belief that beneath an iron reserve she seethed with emotions. Susie never did anything to contradict either hypothesis. When she was reproached with concealing her feelings, she smiled and shook her head with just the same manner as when she was reproached with having no feelings to conceal.

Standing now with her hand on her mother's shoulder, she smiled at Bevans as if she thought him very good to look at, which represented her opinion most accurately.