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Beautiful Kedzie Thropp, Western Society Belle, Deserts Her Wealthy Parents at Biltmore and Vanishes Kedzie felt the world blow up about her. Her name was in the New York papers the second morning of her first visit! Her father and mother were called wealthy! She was a society belle! Who could ever hereafter deny these ideal splendors, now that there had been a piece in the paper about them?

Thropp's cheapness of appearance better than she did. A woman may grow shoddy and careless, but she rarely grows oblivious of her uncomeliness. She will rather cherish it as the final cruelty of circumstances. Mrs. Thropp was keenly alive to the effect it would have on Dyckman if Kedzie introduced her and Adna as the encumbrances on her beauty.

Kedzie learned, too, that to assure her father and mother even so poor an income as five thousand dollars a year would require the setting aside of a hundred thousand dollars at least in gilt-edged securities. She began to have places where she could put a hundred thousand dollars herself.

Kedzie followed the little general up the steps and around to the desk. Her father realized that his fellow-passenger had been teasing him when he referred to this place as a boarding-house, but he was not at all crushed by the magnificence he was encountering.

She was like the traditional prospector who struck it rich and, hastening to civilization, could think of nothing to order but "forty dollars' worth of pork and beans." Kedzie had to satisfy her plutocratic pride by bossing the waiter about, by complaining that the oysters were not chilled and the sherry was. She sent back the salad for redressing and insisted that the meat was from cold storage.

All day long she was posed in costumes for various calendars, as a farmer's daughter, as a society queen, as a camera girl, as a sausage nymph, and as the patron saint of a brewery. In a week she had arrived at classic poses in Greek robes. One by one these were abbreviated, till Kedzie was being very generally revealed to the public eye.

She ordered Kedzie to spend a lot of money having her hair cared for expertly. She tried various styles on Kedzie, ordering her to throw off her frock and stand in her combination while Mrs. Congdon and Mr. Charles brought up armloads of silks and velvets and draped them on Kedzie as if she were a clothes-horse.

He slid out, and Kedzie scurried about her primping. The bell rang. She sent her maid to the door. Dyckman came in. She let him wait awhile then went to him with an elegiac manner. She accepted his salute on a martyr-white brow. He said: "I read about the fire. I was scared to death for you till I learned that all the people were safe. I motored up to see the ruins. Some ruins! Like to see'em?"

They took up the question of their future residence. Jim proposed all the honeymoon haunts. Europe was out of the question, so he suggested Bermuda, Jamaica, California, Atlantic City, North Carolina, the Adirondacks. But Kedzie wanted to get back to New York. This pained and bewildered him at first, because he felt that wedded rapture should hide itself awhile in its own lovely loneliness.

Kedzie had hers, and Charity hers, and the streetcar conductor Kedzie had rebuffed had his, and the Czar with his driven army had his, with more to come, and the Kaiser with his victorious army had his, with more to come. Even Peter Cheever had his in plenty, and of a peculiar secret sort. He had honestly planned to spend his evening with his wife. She seemed to be coming back into style with him.