early morning while her guests slept, riding out behind Parker through the lifting, thinning shadows or sitting in her office with a cup of coffee at one elbow and her telephone at the other.
Her heart was in Summit City. Already new lumber was being hauled up the mountain road from the nearest logging camp, foundations being laid for a dozen picturesque cottages, an ample wing increasing both space and charm of her "inn." But she wanted to be "in it all"; to spend half of a day in her own town, to watch, to superintend, to hate in her nostrils the smell of fresh cut pine. And now she could do as she wished. It was with a long sigh that she waved the two automobiles out of sight.
"I must be getting old," she told herself brightly. "All that I want is peace and quiet and to get things done! That's what's the matter with you, Beatrice Corliss! You'd rather build a house than go to a ball."
Joe Embry she had not seen since that day when she had left him in Summit City. He had telephoned several times, to say indefinitely once that he was "just looking around" for an investment; another time to tell her that he had looked up the man Flash Truitt of the obnoxious gambling house and was rather confident that the fellow was but an agent for Steele; another time or two "just to be sociable, dear lady." He thought so highly of her good sense in having so splendid a mountain home and in living at it the bigger part of the time, that he was thinking very seriously of emulating her and building somewhere within striking distance of Summit City.
