One Day

occasion excited her cousin's disdain. Opposite her sat her mother, Lady Fletcher, a perfect model of the well-bred English matron, while Opal Ledoux, in the dainties

that suited her own fanciful romantic ideas, and where she herself was supposed to lie asleep until her ideal

d stand the winds and torrents of Grown-Up Land; but Opal, in spite of her eighteen years, was still awaiting the coming of her ideal knight, though the stage settin

flitted across the sunshine of her life, she did not reject them. She felt they belonged there and did

r birth and called herself defiantly "a thorough-bred American!" Her mother had died in giving her birth, and her father, while she was still too young to remember, had married a fair Englishwoman who had tried hard to be a mother to the strange little creature whose blood leaped and danced within her veins with all the fire and romance of

r stepmother, yet called kin for courtesy's sake, had given up trying to understand her complexities, as she had likewise given

r. She was so used to being considered a curiosity that it had ceased to have any special concern for her. She only hoped that they would sometime succeed in understanding her better than she had yet learned to understand herself. It

did no

ous, positively immoral ideas. I do wish she were safely married, for then-well, there is really no knowing what might happen to a girl who thinks and

ly when they are in one's family-but there is a bad strain in her blood and they are always looking for it to crop out somewhere. Her mother married happily-and escaped the curse-but for several generations back the women of her family have been of peculiar temperament and-they've usually gone wrong sometime

ut in Alice-"the

yes-sp

asy glance in Opal's dire

ady Henrietta Verdayne. He was an unprincipled roué-this Lord Hubert Aldringham-a libertine who openly boasted of the conquests he had made abroad. Being appointed to many foreign posts i

, Ma

was sh

meekly. "Women will be fools, you know, over a handsome face and a ten

rmured Alice, "

go so far

apprehensively, but Opal was

-what,

, of course, be quoted as saying anything for the world, dear knows; but they say t

rue-if it could be true

principles of virtue and propriety from her very birth, and yet she horrifies every one at ti

knowledge, of the beauties and consolation of religion. It's fine to hear her talk when she's inspired-not a bit preachy, you know-she's certainly far enough from that-bu

mazement. There certainly must be something out of the ordinary in t

at her moth

lp some good man to be a power in the world. I feel it so often when she talks. I didn't know women ever

d it was a mistake to keep her so much alone. It gives her more unre

ed down the long drawing-room toward th

ou talking

prised and showed it

ughed m

than I have!" And she stretched her small figure to its utmost height,

in an effort to change the subject, looking with

racter in the book, not one. When I write a book, and I presume I shall some time, if I live long enough, I shall put

ling things, Op

y! Why

d taking a cup of tea from the hand of her cousin, began to sip it with an air of

o was the young man who stared at us so rudely

man staring, Opa

no right to live, and still less to laugh-I believe I was laughing-and as we turned the corner I peeped back through the curtain, and

like, Opal?" ask

wered the girl, without

ha

simultaneously. T

aint on. He was certainly properly clothed, but as to his being

idn't stare a

o! But I don't believe he saw me at all, more's the pity. I

pa

f now. She did enjoy shocking peopl

pinster's cat! Cats aren't worried about the conventions and all that sort of thing. Happy animals! While we poor two-footed ones they call human-only we aren't really more than half so-have to keep

ry well contented, Opal, with the spher

ure forever! But come! Haven't you an idea, eit

t describe

her eyes in

reek god, dressed en règle. What more do you want

real consternation, which she w

he was about six feet tall. Imagine me, poor little me, looking up to six feet! With broad shoulders; an athletic, muscular figure, like a young Hercules; a well-shaped head, like Apollo's, covered with curls of fair hair; a smooth, clear skin, with the tint of the rose in his cheek that deepened to blood-red w

uld you see so much of a young man in

pou

ng to give it to you. As I told you at the sta

" put in Lady Alice in dry tones of reprehension.

alenska, I believe he calls himself-Paul Verdayne's guest. I r

see him. Paul's a pretty name! I like that-but I'll never, never be able to twist my tongue around the other. He'd get out of hearing before

. That is, no one but the Verdaynes. He

her small han

ght in the flesh! But h

as seriously as though the fate of

im for the Park? Perhaps a 'personal' in the News would answer my purpose-do you think he reads the News,

uld this impossible girl propose next! They would be thankful when they saw her once more safely embarked for the "land of the free," and out from

ers were announced, a

gave all her past delinquencies and smiled approval upon the charming courtesy she extended to their guests. She could be such a lady when she would! No o

s departed, delighted with Lady Alice's "charming American cousin, so sweet, so da

ardently wished that the girl's father would cut short his visit to France and return to take her back wi

erkeley Square Monsieur Paul Z