“All the worse, if it made it seem easy and sure to you. Do you know,” he added suddenly. “Do you know that Leaycraft has gone to keep books for a manufacturing concern out in Dubuque?”

Jadwin pulled his mustache. He was looking at Laura Dearborn over the heads of Landry and the Gretry girl.

“I didn’t suppose he’d be getting measured for a private yacht,” he murmured. Then he continued, pulling his mustache vigorously:

“Charlie, upon my word, what a beautiful⁠—what beautiful hair that girl has!”

Laura was wearing it very high that evening, the shining black coils transfixed by a strange hand-cut ivory comb that had been her grandmother’s. She was dressed in black taffeta, with a single great cabbage-rose pinned to her shoulder. She sat very straight in her chair, one hand upon her slender hip, her head a little to one side, listening attentively to Corthell.