mere girl—­the other from the resemblance and superior age, evidently her mother.  The man was young and almost vulgarly well-groomed.  He had given a glance at Margaret as she entered, a glance of admiration tempered with the consideration that in spite of her grace and beauty, she was probably older than himself.  Then he continued to gaze furtively at the young girl who sat demurely, with eyes downcast beneath a soft, wild tangle of dark hair, against which some pink roses and a blue feather on her hat showed fetchingly.  She was very well dressed, evidently a well-guarded young thing from one of the summer colonies.  The mother, high corseted, and elegant in dark blue lines, which made only a graceful concession to age, without fairly admitting it, never allowed one glance of the young man’s to escape her.  She also saw her slender young daughter with every sense in her body and mind.

Margaret looked away from them.  The elder woman had given her costume an appreciative, and herself a supercilious glance, which had been met with one which did not seem to recognise her visibility.  Margaret was not easily put down by another woman.  She stared absently at the ornate and weary decorations of the room.  It was handsome, but tiresome, as everybody who entered realised, and as, no doubt, the decorator had found out.  It was a ready-made species of room, with no heart in it, in spite of the harmonious colour scheme and really artistic detail.

Presently the boy with the silver tray entered and approached Margaret.  The young man stared openly at her.  He began to wonder if she were not younger than he had thought.  The girl never raised her downcast eyes; the older woman cast one swift sharp glance at her.  The boy murmured so inaudibly that Margaret barely heard, and she rose and followed him as he led the way to the elevator.  Miss Wallingford, who was a young Western woman and a rising, if not already arisen literary star, had signified her willingness to receive Mrs. Wilbur Edes in her own private sitting-room.  Margaret was successful so far.  She had pencilled on her card, “Can you see me on a matter of importance?  I am not connected with the Press,” and the young woman who esteemed nearly everything of importance, and was afraid of the Press, had agreed at once to see her.  Miss Martha Wallingford was staying in the hotel with an elderly aunt, against whose rule she rebelled in spite of her youth and shyness, which apparently made it impossible for her to rebel against anybody, and the aunt had retired stiffly to her bedroom when her niece said positively that she would see her caller.

“You don’t know who she is and I promised your Pa when we started that I wouldn’t let you get acquainted with folks unless I knew all about them,” the aunt had said and the niece, the risen star, had set her mouth hard.  “We haven’t seen a soul except those newspaper men, and I know everyone of them is married, and those two newspaper women who told about my sleeves being out of date,” said Martha Wallingford, “and this Mrs. Edes may be real nice.  I’m going to see her anyhow.  We came so late in the season that I believe everybody in New York worth seeing has gone away and this lady has come in from the country and it may lead to my having a good time after all.  I haven’t had much of a time so far, and you know it, Aunt Susan.”