Mrs. Salisbury really did not like Owen Sargent very well, although his money made her honestly think she did.  He had a wide, pleasant, but homely face, and an aureole of upstanding yellow hair, and a manner as unaffected as might have been expected from the child of his plain old genial father, and his mother, the daughter of a tanner.  He lived alone, with his widowed mother, in a pleasant, old-fashioned house, set in park-like grounds that were the pride of River Falls.  His mother often asked waitresses’ unions and fresh-air homes to make use of these grounds for picnics, but Mrs. Salisbury knew that the house belonged to Owen, and she liked to dream of a day when Sandy’s babies should tumble on those smooth lawns, and Sandy, erect and beautifully furred, should bring her own smart little motor car through that tall iron gateway.

These dreams made her almost effusive in her manner to Owen, and Owen, who was no fool, understood perfectly what she was thinking of him; he understood his own energetic, busy mother; and he understood Sandy’s mother, too.  He knew that his money made him well worth any mother’s attention.

But, like her mother, he believed Sandy too young to have taken any cognizance of it.  He thought the girl liked him as she liked anyone else, for his own value, and he sometimes dreamed shyly of her pleasure in suddenly realizing that Mrs. Owen Sargent would be a rich woman, the mistress of a lovely home, the owner of beautiful jewels.

Both, however, were mistaken in Sandy.  Her blue, blue eyes, so oddly effective under the silky fall of her straight, mouse-colored hair, were very keen.  She knew exactly why her mother suggested that Owen should bring her here or there in the car, “Daddy and the boys and I will go in our old trap, just behind you!” She knew that Owen thought that her quick hand over his, in a game of hearts, the thoughtful stare of her demure eyes, across the dinner table, the help she accepted so casually, climbing into his big car—­were all evidences that she was as unconscious of his presence as Stan was.  But in reality the future for herself of which Sandy confidently dreamed was one in which, in all innocent complacency, she took her place beside Owen as his wife.  Clumsy, wild-haired, bashful he might be at twenty-two, but the farsighted Sandy saw him ten years, twenty years later, well groomed, assured of manner, devotedly happy in his home life.  She considered him entirely unable to take care of himself, he needed a good wife.  And a good, true, devoted wife Sandy knew she would be, fulfilling to her utmost power all his lonely, little-boy dreams of birthday parties and Christmas revels.

To do her justice, she really and deeply cared for him.  Not with passion, for of that as yet she knew nothing, but with a real and absorbing affection.  Sandy read “Love in a Valley” and the “Sonnets from the Portuguese” in these days, and thought of Owen.  Now and then her well-disciplined little heart surprised her by an unexpected flutter in his direction.