Farnham was stopped at some distance from the pretty group by a buxom woman standing near the open window, cooling the vast spread of her bare shoulders in a current of air, which she assisted in its office with a red-and-gold Japanese fan.

“Captain Farnham,” she said, “when are you going to give that lawn-tennis party you promised so long ago?  My character for veracity depends on it.  I have told everybody it would be soon, and I shall be disgraced if it is delayed much longer.”

“That is the common lot of prophets, Mrs. Adipson,” replied Farnham.  “You know they say in Wall Street that early and exclusive information will ruin any man.  But tell me, how is your club getting on?” he continued disingenuously, for he had not the slightest interest in the club; but he knew that once fairly started on the subject, Mrs. Adipson would talk indefinitely, and he might stand there and torture his heart and delight his eyes with the beauty of Alice Belding.

He carried his abstraction a little too far, however, for the good lady soon perceived, from his wandering looks and vague replies, that she was not holding his attention.  So she pettishly released him after following the direction of his eyes, and said, “There, I see you are crazy to go and talk to Miss Dallas.  I won’t detain you.  She is awfully clever, I suppose, though she never took the trouble to be brilliant in my presence; and she is pretty when she wears her hair that way—­I never liked those frizzes.”

Farnham accepted his release with perhaps a little more gratitude than courtesy, and moved away to take a seat which had just been vacated beside Miss Dallas.  He was filled with a boyish delight in Mrs. Adipson’s error.  “That she should think I was worshipping Miss Dallas from afar!  Where do women keep their eyes?  To think that anybody should look at Miss Dallas when Alice Belding was sitting beside her.”  It was pleasant to think, however, that the secret of his unhappy love was safe.  Nobody was gossiping about it, and using the name of his beloved in idle conjectures.  That was as it should be.  His love was sacred from rude comment.  He could go and sit by Miss Dallas, so near his beloved that he could see every breath move the lace on her bosom.  He could watch the color come and go on her young cheek.  He could hear every word her sweet voice uttered, and nobody would know he was conscious of her existence.

Full of this thought, he sat down by Miss Dallas, who greeted him warmly and turned her back upon her friends.  By looking over her shining white shoulder, he could see the clear, pure profile of Alice just beyond, so near that he could have laid his hand on the crinkled gold of her hair.  He then gave himself up to that duplex act to which all unavowed lovers are prone—­the simultaneous secret worship of one woman and open devotion to another.  It never occurred to him that there was anything unfair in this, or that it would be as reprehensible to throw