In truth, it had been no slight achievement for a young writer of her inexperience, a mere tyro in literature, to attract so much attention with her first book.  The success almost threatened to turn her head, she had told her aunt laughingly, although she was sure it could never do that.  She fully realized that it was the subject rather than the skill of the narrator that counted in the book’s success, also the fact that it had come out at a timely moment, when the whole world was talking of the Money Peril.  Had not President Roosevelt, in a recent sensational speech, declared that it might be necessary for the State to curb the colossal fortunes of America, and was not her hero, John Burkett Ryder, the richest of them all?  Any way they looked at it, the success of the book was most gratifying.

While she was an attractive, aristocratic-looking girl, Shirley Rossmore had no serious claims to academic beauty.  Her features were irregular, and the firm and rather thin mouth lines disturbed the harmony indispensable to plastic beauty.  Yet there was in her face something far more appealing—­soul and character.  The face of the merely beautiful woman expresses nothing, promises nothing.  It presents absolutely no key to the soul within, and often there is no soul within to have a key to.  Perfect in its outlines and coloring, it is a delight to gaze upon, just as is a flawless piece of sculpture, yet the delight is only fleeting.  One soon grows satiated, no matter how beautiful the face may be, because it is always the same, expressionless and soulless.  “Beauty is only skin deep,” said the philosopher, and no truer dictum was ever uttered.  The merely beautiful woman, who possesses only beauty and nothing else, is kept so busy thinking of her looks, and is so anxious to observe the impression her beauty makes on others, that she has neither the time nor the inclination for matters of greater importance.  Sensible men, as a rule, do not lose their hearts to women whose only assets are their good looks.  They enjoy a flirtation with them, but seldom care to make them their wives.  The marrying man is shrewd enough to realize that domestic virtues will be more useful in his household economy than all the academic beauty ever chiselled out of block marble.

Shirley was not beautiful, but hers was a face that never failed to attract attention.  It was a thoughtful and interesting face, with an intellectual brow and large, expressive eyes, the face of a woman who had both brain power and ideals, and yet who, at the same time, was in perfect sympathy with the world.  She was fair in complexion, and her fine brown eyes, alternately reflective and alert, were shaded by long dark lashes.  Her eyebrows were delicately arched, and she had a good nose.  She wore her hair well off the forehead, which was broader than in the average woman, suggesting good mentality.  Her mouth, however, was her strongest feature.  It was well shaped, but there were firm lines about it that suggested