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Rh not know how to take it, for the moment suspecting some joke.

To Viola the strange faces seemed unlovely and forbidding. She had met few people in her life, and this sudden plunge into society was a portentous experience. Pale and silent under the glare of the chandelier, she nibbled at her food, having neither heart nor courage to speak. When she raised her eyes she saw the young man opposite—Mrs. Seymour had presented him as "Bart Nelson, our prize young man"—staring at her over his plate with a steady, ruminating air. As he met her eyes for the second time, he said:

"Off your feed?"

And then, in reply to the colonel's look of uneasy inquiry, jerked his head toward Viola and said:

"Mrs. Seymour ain't goin' to lose anything by her."

Mrs. Seymour replied that she wanted somebody like that to even things off against such an appetite as Mr. Nelson's.

The laugh then was on the prize young man, and he joined in it as heartily as the others.

Miss Mercer, who, it appeared, was a school-teacher, and who had the tight-mouthed visage and dominant voice of those who habitually instruct the young, said she guessed Miss Reed was trying to put Mrs. Seymour off her guard;