Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/119

Rh her skirts out on either side. She had a basket on one arm, and holding this firmly, leaned back almost on the wind, laughing to herself.

At the same moment she caught sight of him. The wind dropped suddenly, as if conscious that she should not be presented in such boisterous guise to a lover's eye, and her figure seemed to fall back into lines of decorous demureness; only the color and laughter of her recent buffeting still remained in her face.

"Is it you?" she cried. "Did you see me in the wind? Is n't it fun?"

They met, and he took her hand. She was all blown about, but fresh as a flower that has shaken off the dew. The contrast between them, between what might be called their different ranks in society, was much more clearly marked in the open light of the street than in the ragged homeliness of her own parlor.

While he was essentially the man of luxurious environment and assured position, she presented the appearance of a working-girl. Even the delicacy and refinement of her face could not counteract the suggestion of her dress. Beauty when unadorned may adorn the most, but it cannot give to ill-made old clothes the effect of garments made by a French modiste. John Gault was used to women who wore this kind of clothes—so used, in fact, that he hardly knew what made Viola appear so different from