"Well," said Kate briskly, "if you want to speak, why don't you? Are
your thoughts too deep for words?"

Von Shierbrand achieved a laugh, but Honora was silent. She seemed to
want to say that there was more than one variety of feminine wisdom;
while Von Shierbrand, Kate felt quite sure, would have maintained that
there was but one--the instinctive sort which "Marguerite knew."

* * * * *

The day that Mary Morrison was to arrive conflicted with the visit of a
very great Frenchman to Professor Fulham's laboratory.

"I really don't see how I'm to meet the child, Kate," Honora said
anxiously to her friend. "Do you think you could manage to get down to
the station?"

Kate could and did go. This girl, like herself, was very much on her
own resources, she imagined. She was coming, as Kate had come only the
other day, to a new and forbidding city, and Kate's heart warmed to her.
It seemed rather a tragedy, at best, to leave the bland Californian
skies and to readjust life amid the iron compulsion of Chicago. Kate
pictured her as a little thing, depressed, weary with her long journey,
and already homesick.

The reality was therefore somewhat of a surprise. As Kate stood waiting
by the iron gate watching the outflowing stream of people with anxious
eyes, she saw a little furore centered about the person of an opulent
young woman who had, it appeared, many elaborate farewells to make to