He admired her immeasurably.  He was constantly impressed by the difference between her and her shallow-minded and silly mother, or even between her and such a young woman as Mrs. Wentworth, who lived only for show and extravagance, and appeared in danger of ruining her husband and wrecking his happiness.

It was Mrs. Lancaster who descended from her carriage as Keith passed by.  Just as she was about to enter the shop, a well-knit figure with square shoulders and springy step, swinging down the street, caught her eye.  She glanced that way and gave an exclamation.  The door was being held open for her by a blank-faced automaton in a many-buttoned uniform; so she passed in, but pausing just inside, she glanced back through the window.  The next instant she left the shop and gazed down the street again.  But Keith had turned a corner, and so Alice Lancaster did not see him, though she stood on tiptoe to try and distinguish him again in the crowd.

“Well, I would have sworn that that was Gordon Keith,” she said to herself, as she turned away, “if he had not been so broad-shouldered and good-looking.”  And wherever she moved the rest of the day her eyes wandered up and down the street.

Once, as she was thus engaged, Ferdy Wickersham came up.  He was dressed in the tip of the fashion and looked very handsome.

“Who is the happy man?”

The question was so in keeping with her thought that she blushed unexpectedly.

“No one.”

“Ah, not me, then?  But I know it was some one.  No woman looks so expectant and eager for ‘no one.’”

“Do you think I am like you, perambulating streets trying to make conquests?” she said, with a smile.

“You do not have to try,” he answered lazily.  “You do it simply by being on the street.  I am playing in great luck to-day.”

“Have you seen Louise this morning?” she asked.

He looked her full in the face.  “I see no one but you when you are around.”

She laughed lightly.

“Ferdy, you will begin to believe that after a while, if you do not stop saying it so often.”

“I shall never stop saying it, because it is true,” he replied imperturbably, turning his dark eyes on her, the lids a little closed.

“You have got so in the habit of saying it that you repeat it like my parrot that I taught once, when I was younger and vainer, to say, ‘Pretty Alice.’  He says it all the time.”

“Sensible bird,” said Mr. Wickersham, calmly.  “Come and drive me up to the Park and let’s have a stroll.  I know such a beautiful walk.  There are so many people out to-day.  I saw the lady of the ’cat-eyes and cat-claws’ go by just now, seeking some one whom she can turn again and rend.”  It was the name she had given Mrs. Nailor.

“I do not care who is out.  Are you going to the Wentworths’ this evening?” she asked irrelevantly.

“No; I rarely go there.  Will you mention that to Mrs. Nailor?  She apparently has not that confidence in my word that I could have expected in one so truthful as herself.”