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16 terminate hue, patched with materials of different colors and patterns, and a pair of old leather slippers that slipped off his heels when he walked. In his suave and urbane courtesy he seemed to be serenely indifferent to the deficiencies of his costume, folding his dressing-gown round his legs as he subsided into his chair with the deliberate ease that a Roman senator might have displayed in the arrangement of his toga of ceremony.

His daughter did not appear to share his composure; she was nervous and embarrassed. She swept off the evidences of her dressmaking with a few rapid movements, and took them away to the shadows of the far end of the room, hung another paper flower over the blinding glare of the second lamp, and, sitting by the table, let her glance stray furtively about for further details that needed correcting. John Gault, who appeared to be awarding a polite attention to the colonel's conversational amenities, was conscious of her every movement.

Viola Reed was one of those women that nature seems to have intended to make completely and satisfyingly beautiful, the intention having been changed only at the last moment. The upper half of her head was without a fault—the low forehead, the wonderful hair, thick and wavy, and so instinct with life that every separate filament seemed to stand out from its fel-