S Rand, entering late, looked about the crowded drawing-room in search of his hostess, he smiled reminiscently, remembering his own comment that the decorations of Betty Aldrich's house were always an echo of day after to-morrow. Presently he caught sight of her passing through the hall, and with the privilege of an intimate friend he followed, overtaking her in a small reception-room where she was giving final instructions to the maid in charge of a huge pile of parcels, each wrapped in white tissue and tied with ribbon.
"Hello, Betty!" he said. "Sorry I'm so late."
"Oh, Cliff! I didn't know you were in town." She greeted him enthusiastically, both hands outstretched, and he explained:
"I'm just off the train. Found your card, and it excited my curiosity. What's it all about?"
"I'm so glad you could come!"
"As a matter of fact, I couldn't. I'm up to my neck in work. But then"—his whimsical smile appeared—"where you're concerned, all my trains are accommodations. Tell me, what's a white-elephant sale?"
"Dear man, did you never own a white elephant?"
"Never." He shook his head gravely, only his twinkling eyes betraying his humor. "Mine always prove to be blind kittens and meet an untimely end."
Betty's light laughter made quick response.
"You must be loved of the gods," she declared; "if, in that annual exchange of 'something you can't afford for something you don't want' you've never acquired a white elephant, you couldn't drown!" Again he shook his head, and she demanded, "Clifford Rand, have you no sentiment?"
"My dear Betty, there's no end to that! Whistler's 'damned little thing on the mantelpiece that gives the whole show away' increases and multiplies in the sunshine of sentiment until it's all over the place."
"Then one acquires merit by sacrificing love's offering on the altar of charity"—she indicated the pile of multiformed parcels—"and it becomes a pig in a poke for somebody else. That's what a white-elephant sale is."
"And all the world contributes to it," he appended, nodding toward the adjoining rooms, whence came the confused babble of many voices. "By the way, who's the chap out there who looks like Grove Carrington?"
"It is Grove Carrington."
"I thought he was building bridges and draining swamps and cutting roads through the jungle somewhere."
"He was—and is. He's going back next month." After a moment she added, significantly, "Eleanor's coming to-night, too."
"Is she?" He also hesitated. "I wonder—"
"Yes, we all wonder. You were with us last summer at Murray Bay, Cliff, and you know him awfully well. What broke off that affair?"
"I don't know."
"When she went up there we all thought she was going to marry Clayton Page. I think she thought so herself. But then she and Grove renewed their acquaintance, and seemed so much more than friends, that everybody thought it was serious, until—one day it wasn't, and he was gone."
"Still, the whole thing was so sudden," he reminded her. "When he went out he didn't expect to stay, you know. He was summoned by cable—as consulting engineer in an emergency, don't you remember?—and left the same day for New York. Surely she had nothing to do with that."
"No. But even when the work went wrong and he had to stay she never spoke of him. Apparently, in all this time—almost a year—she's never heard from him. Cliff, something happened. What was it?"
"I wish you'd tell me! He isn't the sort of chap one questions. He's always on guard against daws."
"They're well matched there! Eleanor doesn't wear a decorated sleeve, either. But in all the years I've known her that was the only time when her interest seemed equal to the man's. Of course, people said she had decided to marry Mr. Page, after all—but she didn't. She hasn't even seen him since—and certainly she's never encouraged anybody else." Betty, whose kindly soul rejected all gossip, hesitated before crystallizing in words even an old conjecture, but experience had taught her that she might trust Rand's discretion, so she continued: "For a long time I thought Grove might be going to marry Miriam Latimer, but that's never been announced, either. She and her mother came to Murray Bay just after he arrived, you remember, and her interest in him was very manifest."
"But she's his cousin," he demurred.
"What has that to do with it? Something evidently came between Grove and Eleanor. Why not an earlier attachment?"
"Oh, woman! woman! I'll bet it was a woman who first said Cherchez la femme'" Rand cast his fly with deliberate intention, and Betty rose to it characteristically, retorting: