The date which he had set to dine with the Fairfaxes, of Beechwood, rolled around at last, and for once in his life Kendale, or rather the bogus Lester Armstrong, was punctual in his appointment.

He was ushered into a drawing-room of such magnificence that for a moment he fairly caught his breath in wonder.

“So this was the home of Faynie Fairfax, the girl whom I wedded in the old church and who died so suddenly on her bridal eve,” he soliloquized.  “Well, all this could be mine for the fighting for it as Faynie’s husband, who has survived her, but, as Halloran would say, ’It’s a deal easier getting the same fortune by marrying the stepmother’s daughter, who has come into it by Faynie’s father cutting her off at the eleventh hour.’

“I wonder what the girl Claire is like.”

There was a portrait of a young girl done in water colors over the mantel.  He stepped over to examine it.

“If this is Claire’s portrait she’s certainly not bad looking,” he mused, “but she is one I should not care to cross.”

The figure was slight, draped in a gown of some light, airy fabric.  The head was small, crowned in a mass of waving dark hair.  The contour of the face was perfect; a pair of deep gray eyes looked out of it straight at you; the lips were small, but a little too compressed, showing that the owner of them had certainly a will of her own, which it was neither wise nor best to cross.

He was startled from his contemplation by the sound of silken robes rustling across the carpet, and, wheeling suddenly about, he was confronted by a tall, slim, magnificent woman, who welcomed him most graciously to Fairfax House.

“My daughter Claire will join us in a very few minutes.  Ah, she is here now,” she announced, as a swift step was heard in the corridor outside; a moment later the portieres parted, and the young girl whose portrait he had been critically analyzing entered the room.

“I shall know at once by the first words he utters whether I shall like him or not,” thought the girl, looking straight into his face with her fearless, keen, gray eyes.  “He is handsome, and that generally goes with great conceit, Faynie always said.”

“I hope we shall be friends, Miss Fairfax,” he said, extending his hand and bowing low over the little brown one that lay for an instant in his palm.

“There is a great mistake evident at the outset,” said the girl, looking up into his face.  “Mamma said just now:  ‘This is my daughter Claire.’  I think mamma intended to add, ‘Miss Claire Stanhope.’  Mr. Fairfax was my steppapa.”

Kendale smiled amusedly, both at the mother’s momentary discomfiture and the young girl’s brusque straightforwardness.

“I like her better than any one I have ever met.  I shall marry her,” he promised himself.

CHAPTER XXII.

Claire’s lover.