But Margaret Elizabeth in that frivolously-becoming cap was an antidote to her own remarks.  Mrs. Pennington smiled indulgently.  Richard’s daughter came honestly by some eccentricities, not to mention those Vandegrifts, whose influence she greatly deplored.

“You will outgrow these socialistic ideas, my dear,” she said.  “But I am still puzzled, the more I think of it, at your meeting Augustus on Sunday morning.  Was it two weeks ago?  I am under the impression he left for New York that very day.”

“He didn’t mention it, but there are afternoon trains,” answered Margaret Elizabeth.  “He merely said something about a sick boy he was going to see at St. Mary’s.”

This again was very unlike Augustus, but Mrs. Pennington said no more.  Meanwhile the faintest shadow of a doubt was dawning in her niece’s mind; so shadowy she was scarcely aware of it, until, glowing from her walk across the park, she entered the drawing-room that afternoon.

There is, by the way, a difference between walking in Sunset Park, the abode of the elect, with a huge St. Bernard in leash, and taking the same exercise at River Bend, unchaperoned save by a chance guard.  Any right-minded person must see this.

A young man, who sat talking to Mrs. Gerrard Pennington before the fire, rose at her entrance.

“I am glad you have come, Margaret Elizabeth,” her aunt exclaimed.  “I think you know Mr. McAllister?  But we have rather a good joke on you, for August says he was never in his life in River Bend Park.”

“How do you do, Miss Bentley.  Awfully glad to see you.  That is, except to motor through, don’t you know, Mrs. Pennington.”

Miss Bentley’s brown eyes met Mr. McAllister’s blue ones, and in the period of one brief glance she experienced almost as many sensations, and reviewed as much past history, as the proverbial drowning man.  The casual resemblance was striking.  But the eyes—­these were not the friendly, merry eyes to which she had confided the fairy godmother nonsense.  Fancy so much as mentioning fairy godmothers in the presence of these steely orbs.

Margaret Elizabeth was game, however.

“I was mistaken, of course,” she owned lightly, as she shook hands.  “I have met so many people, and am stupid at connecting names and faces.  I recall Mr. McAllister perfectly.”  And straightway she plunged into New York and what was going on there.  Had he seen “Grumpy” and wasn’t it dear?  And so on, and so on.  Margaret Elizabeth could talk, and more than this she could look bewitching, and did, when she slipped out of her long coat, and with many graceful upward motions, removed her hat and fluffed her hair.