“After all,” she sighed, taking up her cup again, “it may be the best thing in the world for Louise.  We don’t know whether that young Weldon, who is paying her attentions just now, is going to inherit his father’s money or not.  He’s been a bit wild, I’ve heard, and it is just as well to postpone any engagement until we find out the facts.  I can do that nicely while my sweet child is in Europe with Uncle John, and away from all danger of entanglements.  Really, it’s an ill wind that blows no good!  I’ll go talk with Louise.”

CHAPTER III

“All ashore”

Beth De Graf was a puzzle to all who knew her.  She was a puzzle even to herself, and was wont to say, indifferently, that the problem was not worth a solution.  For this beautiful girl of fifteen was somewhat bitter and misanthropic, a condition perhaps due to the uncongenial atmosphere in which she had been reared.  She was of dark complexion and her big brown eyes held a sombre and unfathomable expression.  Once she had secretly studied their reflection in a mirror, and the eyes awed and frightened her, and made her uneasy.  She had analyzed them much as if they belonged to someone else, and wondered what lay behind their mask, and what their capabilities might be.

But this morbid condition mostly affected her when she was at home, listening to the unpleasant bickerings of her father and mother, who quarrelled constantly over trifles that Beth completely ignored.  Her parents seemed like two ill tempered animals confined in the same cage, she thought, and their snarls had long since ceased to interest her.

This condition had, of course, been infinitely worse in all those dreadful years when they were poverty stricken.  Since Uncle John had settled a comfortable income on his niece the grocer was paid promptly and Mrs. De Graf wore a silk dress on Sundays and held her chin a little higher than any other of the Cloverton ladies dared do.  The Professor, no longer harrassed by debts, devoted less time to the drudgery of teaching and began the composition of an oratorio that he firmly believed would render his name famous.  So, there being less to quarrel about, Beth’s parents indulged more moderately in that pastime; but their natures were discordant, and harmony in the De Graf household was impossible.

When away from home Beth’s disposition softened.  Some of her school-friends had seen her smile—­a wonderful and charming phenomenon, during which her expression grew sweet and bewitchingly animated and her brown eyes radiant with mirthful light.  It was not the same Beth at all.