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Rh where lots were being laid out and sold off to interested speculators. And from the beginning he sought tirelessly to come a little closer to Beatrice Corliss.

But when he tried to telephone he was told briefly by Booth Stanton that she "was away"; just where or for how long was not made clear. When he wrote she must have marked an absence of impudence, and yet no answers came to his notes.

He got into the habit of dropping in to chat with Carruthers' wife and watch the Twins when he could.. Sylvia, alert and quick as a flash, was not long in coming to a certain understanding of Bill Steele's altered manner. Times were when he'd sit still for ten minutes with a Twin clinging to a big forefinger; when he'd forget to be the old Bill Steele whom she knew. And the look in his eyes which Sylvia surprised there repeatedly was a wide open book in her own mother tongue to that keen witted young matron.

"He is in love, Bob," she told her husband.

"Sure," laughed Carruthers. "Didn't I tell you when he showed up in San Francisco that he had the case of his life on some Italian widow woman?"

"Pooh!" scoffed Sylvia, frankly revealing her utter feminine contempt of the species masculine. "It's Beatrice Corliss!"

"Can't be," said Carruthers, the masculine. "Why, Bill himself told me they're deadly foes or something like that. They've been fighting each other ever since he came up here."

"Which settles it positively," cried Sylvia in full triumph. "Isn't it splendid!"