The Beauty

The bride had passed through the admiring groups with a smile here, a word there and was already half up the stairway, above the voices, the heavy flower scents, the sentimental...

So Mr. and Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth whirled away in the big motor and for the next few months wandered about the globe. Perdita, who had seen nothing but an old southern plantati...

When the beautiful, young wife of a multi-millionaire takes advantage of her husband's absence on a prolonged and unavoidable business trip to embark upon a rather bizarre and e...

The hour which Dita had set for her appointment with Cresswell Hepworth was twelve the next morning, consequently she was not only surprised but perturbed when Eugene's name was...

When Dita wakened the next morning, it was very late, almost noon. She came slowly to waking consciousness over wastes of apprehension, oppressed by some heavy sense of disaster...

Procrastination was a thief that had never succeeded in wresting much time from Hepworth. He was one of those rare and exemplary natures who never put off until to-morrow what t...

With the departure of a third person the situation immediately changed complexion. It became more intimate and therefore more embarrassing. With Eugene had departed the audience...

One morning, a California morning, all sea-breezes and flower-scents and golden sunshine, Mr. Hepworth read, as he ate his breakfast, a letter from Willoughby Hewston. The lette...

Perdita, being one of those ardent, mercurial creatures who run with winged feet to meet every event in life, whether it be joyous or disastrous, had encountered her bad quarter...

One morning, shortly before she left for New York, Miss Fuschia Fleming and her father sat in the sitting-room of their suite in the hotel at Santa Barbara. The sunshine without...

Early in April Hepworth returned to New York. It was a gentle, smiling April, inclining more to laughter than to tears and striving to obliterate the memories of March. He arriv...

Maud had been shown at once to the sitting-room of Mrs. Hepworth's personal suite of apartments, and there Dita sat in the dim and depressing gloaming of the unlighted chamber,...

If the proper statistics of bachelorhood were accurately tabulated they would show that at certain fixed and recurring periods, a confirmed old bachelor, say one in every ten, c...

The Warrens and Mrs. Wilstead had remained in Santa Barbara a week, time enough for Alice to discover that Hepworth was in no apparent need of the consolatory offices of his old...

"Maud," said Dita, walking in upon that young woman, a package of letters in her hand, "a lot of things are happening. Here is a letter, among other things, from Mrs. Wilstead....

It was only a day or two after her arrival in New York that Fuschia Fleming, who had been rehearsing the greater part of the night, opened her sleepy eyes in the hotel chamber t...

Maud Carmine was slowly pulling off her gloves before the fire in the old-fashioned drawing-room of the old-fashioned down-town house where she and her mother lived alone. It wa...

Perdita Hepworth had entered the room, with Eugene Gresham just a step or two behind her, and, after a glance in the direction of Maud Carmine and her husband, had moved toward...

Perdita committed an unpardonable social sin that evening. She, the hostess, was late in her own house. In fact she had sent down word that they were to begin dinner without her.

Dita's fears calmed by Mrs. Wilstead's essentially common-sense point of view, her confidence was further restored by Eugene's evident ignorance of any plots and plans on Mr. Cr...

As the winter wore on the weather in New York offered daily a more violent and odious comparison to the blue seas and balmy airs of California. The cold, sullen skies, dull, dam...

Dita had barely finished her breakfast the next morning when the message was brought to her that a lady who refused to give her name but insisted on seeing her at once upon impo...

"Good night, Hewston, good night, Alice. Don't go yet, Gresham." Hepworth laid a detaining hand on the artist's arm. "Sit down and smoke. We haven't had a moment to discuss this...

AS it chanced the Hepworths were not particularly fortunate in their choice of an evening for the dinner so gloomily anticipated by their guests. The weather was unpropitious. A...

Scarcely had the hall door closed behind them when Hepworth turned to Dita inquiringly. "Would you not very much prefer that I left you?" he asked. "I can see that you are not w...