(qnorris Xx1 THE STORY SO FAR: Charlotte ( lu-rry, Rawlln.. an orphan, nas Zt t Saint IX-rothca's convent school since he was seven years old. She knows al most ,,llnR ,bout her ca h,sor;sbt srta ":l"VM"IC'1 oil,., K Iris at U,o school t,e has no family and q est os whether she has a rlBht to her bank. ?T' 1Va" J,,dson "'"" banks and Emma Haskell are her co-guardians. co-guardians. When she Is twenty Marsh-bank, Marsh-bank, tens her that Emm. has Bo.ten h a secretarial position In San Fran-ei-sco with wealthy old Mrs. Porteous Porter. She goes Brst to the Marsh-banks Marsh-banks mansion and dines alone with the ! V Fra"' hls youne nd his niece. Amy, are dining out. Kelly Coates an artist, drops In, and Fran and Amy stop on their way out. As they leave, therry hears laughing reference to her convent clothes and she Is bitter. Life with Mrs. Porter Is monotonous, and she s thrilled when Kelly, horseback riding In the park with Fran, stops to talk with her while she Is motoring with her em-ployer. em-ployer. Later he sends her a boi of candy and she Is Jealous when she sees him with Fran at a party given by Mrs. Porter. Emma tells Cherry that her sister, Charlotte, was Cherry's mother. Kelly takes Cherry along so Fran will visit his Sausallto studio, and t Is evident that be Is very much in love with Fran, but later he teUs Cherry despondently that Fran has promised the Judge she will not see him any more. Mrs. Porter dies, leaving Cherry $1,500. Now continue with the story. CHAPTER IX "I'm in tr-trouble and I've been crying, and I wondered if you'd corner corner come and take me for a drive!" stammered stam-mered Cherry. "I I've had bad news and I'm all all alone!" "Trouble, Marchioness?" Kelly said, instantly concerned. "Hold everything, ev-erything, and I'll be there in twenty minutes, and you come on over here and have supper with me. Hey? Good girl! I was just feeling very low and blue and we'll fix each other oth-er up. I'm on my way!" Kelly would not let her begin on the story of her troubles until she had eaten. Then he piled things on a tray, carried them away, came back to sit in the chair opposite her, stuffing his pipe and looking expectantly toward her. "Now, who's been mean to you?" She gave him a flicker of a smile, but immediately her face was serious se-rious again. "I feel so ashamed of having bothered both-ered you with it! But I I felt that I was going mad, and you were the only friend I could think of. I just thought that if you were coming to town you might take me for a drive. I didn't mean all this!" "I tell you my "troubles," he reminded re-minded her, drawing on his pipe. "You see, we girls at Saint Dorothea's Doro-thea's never know much about our families. It isn't a regular school, you know. There aren't any vacations, vaca-tions, and no relatives coming to see you." "That's the school you came from?" "Yes. I was there thirteen years, from the time I was seven. But I remembered my mother before that, and that I had a nurse named Emma." "Fran told me something about it." "At least I thought she was my nurse, and I used to imagine that my mother had been well, rich, I suppose, because someone had left money to take care of me and that Judge Marshbanks was my guardian." guard-ian." "I see. Go on, Marchioness." "Well, then when I came down and they'd found me a position with Mrs. Porter, Emma told me one day that she was my mother's sister. sis-ter. She wasn't a nurse at all, she was she is my aunt!" "A jolt, huh?" "I don't think it was a jolt because be-cause she was a housekeeper and because I'd always thought of her as a nurse," Cherry said. Close to tears again she looked blindly into the darting daggers and stars of the fire, and tried to steady her trembling lips. "My dear girl," Kelly Coates said, taking his pipe from his mouth, "loads of people are going to love you, don't you worry!" Cherry laughed brokenly, stealthily stealth-ily wiped her eyes, and went on, "but, you see, Mrs. Porter left me some money" "Well bully for her!" Kelly commented. com-mented. "Have a good cry over that' " "They read the will today. The house is going to be a museum, and lots of the furniture will be left there, and Amy gets a lot, and we all get money." Cherry paused as if undecided how to proceed, then rushed on "But then-but then, after they d read the will, Amy and the judge and I were having tea in the library, and Ze were talking about what Amy d do and what I'd do and all that and I happened to call Emma 'Aunt E -But' he's your guardian. He'd know that she was your aunt. nh yes, that wasn't it. And when Amy seemed surprised I just H that I called her that sometimes some-times and Amy didn't pay any at- Rt afterward Amy went a"d then theW asked me if Frnma had told me about it and I faTd yes because I thought that was all he meant." -What was all he meant? wnai w was mother's "That Aunt kmma sister." . , . mean?" 'And what more did he med W.N.U. KtLEASf villi ktyi! I f tlP fell : e&ttSfcJ' ; ! "I'm in tr-trouble and I've been crying, and I wondered if you'd come come come and take me for a drive!" stammered Cherry. "Well, that that he went on talking talk-ing about it, and that Aunt Emma was so fine even if she was rather cold, and then he said that his brother broth-er Fred was really a good person but impulsive and always getting into trouble ..." "His brother Fred!" Kelly had kneeled to straighten a slipped log in the fire. He shot her a look over his shoulder. "Fred was Amy's father?" "Yes. Amy's name'is Amy Marsh-banks." Marsh-banks." "That's right too. There was another an-other brother?" "No. Only Amy's father." Kelly stopped his pipe halfway to his mouth and stared at her. "Huh," he commented, in a brief sound like a grunt. "And it it killed me," Cherry said, not crying now, but pale and beginning to be agitated again. "It killed me! She's always had everything every-thing she'll have more now but it's not that! It's that they all loved her and wanted her and they've made so much of her and she's always al-ways had I mean, I don't want anything she has but they love her . ." She steadied suddenly at the sight of his attentive but not too sympathetic sympa-thetic face and for a moment looked at him in silence. "I mean," she went on presently, gaining self-control with every word, "I mean that it it sickened me to think that Amy and I are half sisters, sis-ters, and that he, my father, could treat my mother so terribly my mother was so gentle, and she was ill so long! And she got nothing, and. I spent all those years at Saint Dorothea's while Amy was traveling travel-ing . . ." Her voice trailed off into an ashamed silence; the look she turned to Kelly became aggrieved and then apologetic. For a full minute min-ute neither spoke, and then Cherry said something timidly, "Don't you think that's terrible?" "You rather knew, I suppose," Kelly began, "that things in your background had been somewhat irregular?" ir-regular?" "Oh, yes, I did. Indeed, I did! They don't tell you anything at Saint Dorothea's, you know, but of course the girls talk. And we read books." "Well, then, looky, Cherry. Why is it so much worse to know that your father came of a good family, and that he really tried to do what he could for you? I suppose it was he who supported your mother, Emma's Em-ma's sister, and left money to take care of you?" "Yes; the judge said so today." "You're better off than I am," said Kelly. "You're twenty and I'm thirty-one. You've got all the world before you, and I'm so damned in love with a married woman that I don't know what to do with myself." my-self." He glanced at his watch. "It's ten-ten. I'm going to run you home." They went out into the darkness to the car. He stopped at the gloomy Porter mansion and got out and went up to the door with her. "You'll never know what you've done for me tonight," Cherry said in the dark columns of the entrance. "You did something for me too. I've been seeing blue devils all day. Listen," he went on in a brighter tone, "here's a bargain. If you get too down, you telephone me, and if I'm going crazy any time I'll telephone tele-phone you, and we'll walk it off together. There are swell walks up over the hills over my way. How about it?" "I would think it the nicest, thing that ever happened to me," she said in a low tone. "It's a go, then." "There's only one thing. If we do that then I mightn't ever have any troubles," Cherry explained, her hand in his. "You know what you ought to get for that!" His arm held her lightly, his lips brushed her forehead and he was gone. Emma had gone with her kitten to the country now, and Cherry was to leave for Palo Alto in a few days, to take possession of a room m the house of one Mrs. Pringle. and to hegin summer-school work and to do a certain amount of coaching so as to be able to enter college as a regu- student in the fall. On this par-ticular par-ticular day she was going down in the limousine with Fran who had a call or two to make in Atherton and Menlo Park, and who would pick Cherry up for the return trip after Cherry had introduced herself to her new landlady and inspected her quarters. When she and Fran were in the car, Fran said presently, "Run the window down, will you, Cherry? It's warm." ''Wouldn't you rather have the side windows down?" "No, I want to speak to Rousseau. Rousseau, go the old road, will you, please?" Fran asked, when she could speak to the chauffeur. "For I promised I'd stop at the antique shop." The young Frenchman did not turn his head. But he nodded slightly. slight-ly. ' "No, wait a minute, I think we'll do that after we leave Miss Rawl-ings Rawl-ings in Palo Alto," Fran changed it suddenly. "Now what's she about?" Cherry thought. "She's meeting someone!" "I've not seen Kelly Coates for weeks," Fran presently said thoughtfully, as if reading Cherry's mind. "He telephones, but I haven't happened to be in. I like him, too." "He likes you," Cherry said daringly. dar-ingly. "You see Kelly now and then, don't you?" Fran asked. "Now and then." "Lately?" "The day we closed up Mrs. Porter's Por-ter's house that was day before yesterday I saw him then," Cherry Cher-ry said, omitting any mention of the Sausalito visit. "We walked a little while in the Presidio." "You like him a lot, don't you?" the soft, hoarse voice with its hidden hid-den notes of laughter and of tears asked simply. Cherry felt the blood in her face. "I guess so," she admitted, swallowing. swal-lowing. "Too bad," Fran said absently. "I'm sorry about Kelly! I was very unhappy when I married Jud," she presently went on, "and I told him that although I didn't love him as I might love some man some day he's twenty-two years older than I am, you know ..." "But that's all the more reason," Fran began again, after a pause, "why I should play fair with him." She paused. "Cherry, I wonder if you will do something for me." "I'd be so glad, Mrs. Marsh-banks!" Marsh-banks!" "To begin with," Fran said with a direct smile from under her silky black bangs, and ultramodern hat, "don't call me Mrs. Marshbanks! It sounds as if I were an elderly aunt." "Fran, then. What can I do?" "I'm trying to think it out, exactly," exact-ly," Fran answered. "I think I mean tha.t I'd like you to be a friend of Kelly's, Cherry, and help him see my position. If I were free," Fran went on thoughtfully, "I'd marry him. But I'm not free. You see, Cherry, two years ago more than two years ago, when we'd been marriedoh, mar-riedoh, perhaps eighteen months or so I told Jud that I wanted to live my own life. I didn't want to be his wife any more suddenly I went restless and unhappy, and it was that. I didn't want to be his wife! " Fran continued: "Perhaps I'm a little less scrupulous than I might be about I won't say flirting, I hate the word! But about friendships with men, liking men. I can't help it I've made ..." And to Cherry's astonishment the dark eyes so near her own were suddenly misting. "I've made such a mess of my life so far," Fran said, "that I'm going to play the game now." "So if you can," Fran concluded, as Cherry continued to watch her in silent fascination, "put that to Kelly. Kel-ly. He likes you. He thinks you're interesting. And you see, nowadays I don't see him at all. I promised Jud I'd not see him unless it was unavoidable, and it is avoidable. "This is your place; it looks comfortable com-fortable enough." Fran said as the car stopped. "Ask Rousseau to go to the gas station in Atherton, will you, and we'll find out there where the Rasmussen place is. And we'll be back for you at five." Cherry, delightfully thrilled, descended de-scended at a green hedge not too well trimmed. Mrs. Pringle, large and untidy, took her up to her room, which was large, 'TO BE C0.T1MEDJ