Sylvia, unable to meet Morrison’s eyes, absorbed in the difficulty of the moment for her, unillumined by the byplay between her aunt and old Mr. Sommerville, strove for an appearance of vivacious loquacity, and cast into the conversation entirely disregarded bits of description of the fire.  “Oh, Tantine, such an excitement!—­we took nine men with hoes up such a steep—!” And finally Page, resisting old Mr. Sommerville’s pull on his arm, was saying:  “If luncheon is ready, and I’m invited, no more needs to be said.  I’ve been haying and fire-fighting since seven this morning.  A wolf is nothing compared with me.”  He looked across the heads of the three nearest him and called to Arnold:  “Smith, you’ll lend me some flannels, won’t you?  We must be much of the same build.”

Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned, taking no pains to hide her satisfaction.  She positively gloated over the crestfallen Mr. Sommerville.  “Sylvia, run quick and have Helene smooth your hair.  And call to Tojiko to put on an extra place for luncheon.  Arnold, take Mr. Page up to your room, won’t you, so that he—­”

Sylvia, running up the stairs, heard her late companion protesting:  “Oh, just for a change of clothes, only a minute—­you needn’t expect me to do any washing.  I’m clean.  I’m washed within an inch of my life—­yellow soap—­kitchen soap!”

“And our little scented toilet futilities,” Morrison’s cameo of small-talk carried to the upper hall.  “What could they add to such a Spartan lustration?”

“Hurry, Helene,” said Sylvia.  “It is late, and Mr. Page is dying of hunger,”

In spite of the exhortation to haste, Helene stopped short, uplifted brush in hand.  “Mr. Page, the millionaire!” she exclaimed.

Sylvia blinked at her in the glass, amazed conjectures racing through her mind.  But she had sufficient self-possession to say, carelessly as though his identity was nothing to her:  “I don’t know.  It is the first time I have seen him.  He certainly is not handsome.”

Helene thrust in the hairpins with impassioned haste and deftness, and excitedly snatched a lace jacket from a drawer.  To the maid’s despair Sylvia refused this adornment, refused the smallest touch of rouge, refused an ornament in her hair.  Helene wrung her hands.  “But see, Mademoiselle is not wise!  For what good is it to be so savage!  He is more rich than all!  They say he owns all the State of Colorado!”

Sylvia, already in full retreat towards the dining-room, caught this last geographic extravagance of Gallic fancy, and laughed, and with this mirth still in her face made her re-entry on the veranda.  She had not been away three minutes from the group there, and she was to the eye as merely flushed and gay when she came back as when she went away; but a revolution had taken place.  Closely shut in her hand, she held, held fast, the key Helene had thrust there.  Behind her smile, her clear, bright look of valiant youth, a great many considerations were being revolved with extreme rapidity by an extremely swift and active brain.