“I think it was good; and I am glad you should really know Sin Saxon—­at the first.”  And at the best; Marmaduke Wharne quite understood her.  She gave him, unconsciously, the key to a whole character.  It might as easily have been something quite different that he should have first seen in this young girl.

Next morning they all met on the piazza.  Leslie Goldthwaite presented Sin Saxon to Mr. Wharne.

“So, my dear,” he said, without preface, “you are the belle of the place?”

He looked to see how she would take it.  There was not the first twinkle of a simper about eye or lip.  Surprised, but quite gravely, she looked up, and met his odd bluntness with as quaint an honesty of her own.  “I was pretty sure of it a while ago,” she said.  “And perhaps I was, in a demoralized sort of a way.  But I’ve come down, Mr. Wharne,—­like the coon.  I’ll tell you presently,” she went on,—­and she spoke now with warmth,—­“who is the real belle,—­the beautiful one of this place!  There she comes!”

Miss Craydocke, in her nice, plain cambric morning-gown, and her smooth front, was approaching down the side passage across the wing.  Just as she had come one morning, weeks ago; and it was the identical “fresh petticoat” of that morning she wore now.  The sudden coincidence and recollection struck Sin Saxon as she spoke.  To her surprise, Miss Craydocke and Marmaduke Wharne moved quickly toward each other, and grasped hands like old friends.

“Then you know all about it!” Sin Saxon said, a few minutes after, when she got her chance.  “But you don’t know, sir,” she added, with a desperate candor, “the way I took to find it out!  I’ve been tormenting her, Mr. Wharne, all summer.  And I’m heartily ashamed of it.”

Marmaduke Wharne smiled.  There was something about this girl that suited his own vein.  “I doubt she was tormented,” he said quietly.

At that Sin Saxon smiled, too, and looked up out of her hearty shame which she had truly felt upon her at her own reminder.  “No, Mr. Wharne, she never was; but that wasn’t my fault.  After all, perhaps,—­isn’t that what the optimists think?—­it was best so.  I should never have found her thoroughly out in any other way.  It’s like”—­and there she stopped short of her comparison.

“Like what?” asked Mr. Wharne, waiting.

“I can’t tell you now, sir,” she answered with a gleam of her old fearless brightness.  “It’s one end of a grand idea, I believe, that I just touched on.  I must think it out, if I can, and see if it all holds together.”

“And then I’m to have it?”

“It will take a monstrous deal of thinking, Mr. Wharne.”

CHAPTER XV.

QUICKSILVER AND GOLD.