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 CHAPTER IX

“Wxo's the princely party holding Con's hand in the library?”

Patricia, home from school for the Easter vacation, — slouched against Mary Delia’s door as she put her question. The child had begun to take on the florescence of the woman.

Her meagre face had filled out; the lines

of her slim figure had become firmer, more gracious; the knowing eyes deeper of hue, more veiled of intent. She was still sallow, but the reproach of “pimply ttle gnome”

was no longer applicable. Her trusted Dr. Bobs had promised her the complexion of a peach if she would hold to his stern regimen of diet for a year, and as she had been fairly faithful, though with an occasional lapse into her besetting sin of gluttony, the clarification of her blood already showed in a soft lustre underlying the duller

tint of the skin.

Her teeth had whitened im perceptible

degree, and her tongue reddened from its former farry grey of replete mornings. She glowed with a conscious and eager vitality. Startled by the form of the question put to her so

abruptly, Mary Delia looked up from the golf glove which she was mending. “Is he holding her hand?” she said unguardedly.

“Figure of speech,” returned the airy Pat, perceiving, however, that there was something in this. “They look pretty chummy, though. Who is he, Dee? “Cary Scott.”

“Meaning httle or nothing to muh. Where's he from?" “All over. He was a friend of Mona‘s.”