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 couldn't stay away, and I thought perhaps you were going through the same thing as Elpsie. Of course, he liked you much the best. I guessed when he borrowed the black pair from Papa they were for you, and then my Uncle Smith saw you drive through Cambridge. Elpsie was up almost all night listening to hear the horses come back. You'll think I have been spying upon you'—Lydia pushed back her dark furs. In the excitement her pink face was approaching cerise. 'I was just going by. I couldn't help running in to see you because, although he looked so romantic, Anthony Jones was really'—her teeth snapped together—'a skunk,' she finished with engaging vulgarity.

The two young women looked at each other and an instantaneous understanding was established. Lanice resented neither the spying into her affairs nor the idea that her lover was merely a skunk.

'This morning,' Miss Lydia continued in the rapid voice of a child who has learned to speak a piece, 'Papa had an answer to a letter he wrote a friend in England weeks ago. It was such a comfort to Elpsie; I mean, she now hates Anthony Jones, and of course it is almost fun to hate a man in comparison to loving him when he doesn't really care for you.'

'Do sit down. What was in the letter?'

'I can't sit down, but all the time, years before he went to Arabia, or even out to India, he was married to an English girl.'

'' ' Married! ' '' Lanice had become reconciled to the ir-