After dinner they strolled into an alcove, screened from the hall by great pots of palms, and sat down to listen to the music, and watch the people passing back and forth.  It was a gay scene.  Ladies in elaborate evening gowns passed out with their escorts to the opera, or waited for the carriages that were to take them later to balls or receptions.  Everywhere there was the gleam of white shoulders, the nodding of jewelled aigrettes, the flashing of diamond tiaras.  Above it all rose the odour of flowers, the hum of voices, and the music of violins.

Mr. Forbes, smiling through half-closed eyelids at this passing of Vanity Fair, looked down at Eugenia.  She was leaning forward in a picturesque pose against the arm of her high-backed chair.  The light fell softly on her pale yellow gown and her dusky hair.  The red lips were parted in a smile as she watched the pretty pageant, and there was a bright colour in her cheeks.

Mr. Forbes was proud of his handsome little daughter.  He admired her ease of manner, and boasted that she was as self-possessed under all circumstances as any grown woman he knew.  It pleased him to have his friends predict that she would be a brilliant social success.  He was doing everything in his power to make her that, and yet—­sometimes—­a vague fear crossed his mind that she was growing cold and selfish.  Sometimes she seemed far too old and worldly-wise for a child of her age.  He sighed as he looked at her.  They were sitting so near each other that his hand rested on the arm of her chair.  Yet he felt that they had grown widely apart in their long absences.

“What are you thinking about, Eugenia?” he asked, suddenly.  She turned with a little start.

“Oh, I had forgotten that you were there!” she exclaimed.  “I was thinking of Locust, and how glad I would be to get away from this tiresome place.  It’s such a bore to do the same thing night after night, and always watch the same kind of people.”

A shadow crossed his face, but she did not see it.  She had turned back to her day-dreams in which he had no part.  Happy little day-dreams, of what was to come with the coming June.

CHAPTER IV.

“ONE FLEW WEST.”

Out in the village of Plainsville, Kansas, the rain was running in torrents down the gables of the little brown house where the Ware family lived.  It had rained all day, a cold, steady pour, until the world outside had taken on the appearance of early March, instead of late May.

Holland and Mary and the baby (they called him baby still, although he was nearly four) were playing menagerie in the corners of the dining-room.  They had a tent made of the clothes-horse and some sheets, and the growling and roaring that went on inside was something terrific.  It made no difference to the little mother, placidly sewing by the last rays of daylight at one of the western windows; but the noise grated on Joyce’s mood.