in the air. Already the city was beginning to show signs of the summer exodus, and Letitia was glad that in her journey across town she met no acquaintances and attracted no more attention than that frankly candid stare which is male California's passing tribute to beauty.
Though she had been born in South Park, she knew nothing of this side of the city, and found herself as much a stranger as its inhabitants would have been had they been transported to the aristocratic heart of the Western Addition. Finally, however, after some questioning of small boys and much retracing of steps, she found the house, and walked up the path with the black-and-white flagging.
Letitia was one to whom the word "shyness" has no meaning. She possessed her full share of the Westerner's placid self-approval, and with it that careless curiosity which makes an incursion into new surroundings interesting. Yet, as she stood waiting for the door to open, she experienced a sensation of nervousness quite new to her. Her heart had ached more in the last twenty-four hours than it had since her mother's death, years before. If Viola Reed was an adventuress or if she was a saint, the situation was equally painful to this splendid-looking creature, who, for all her regal air and stately immobility of demeanor, was only a woman of a simple, almost primitive type.
