Liane shook her head.
"No? Why, that is strange. Every one is talking about it, and they say that you and I are pretty enough to compete for the prize, although Miss Roma Clarke intends to exhibit her handsomest portrait."
"Is it a portrait show?"
"It is this way, Liane: A Boston artist has a commission to design the outside cover of a magazine for December, and he wants to get a lovely young girl for the central figure—a young girl taken from life. So he has advertised for five hundred pictures of beauties, to be delivered by next week, when they will be exhibited on the walls of the town hall, and judges appointed to decide on the fairest. Of course, the artist himself is to be one of the judges, and they say that Mr. Clarke and Mr. Devereaux will be two of the others, but I don't know the rest. Don't you think it's unfair, Liane, to have Roma Clarke's father and lover for judges? Of course, they will show her some partiality in their votes."
Liane murmured with dry lips in a choking voice:
"Is Mr. Devereaux Miss Clarke's lover?"
"So they say, but I hope it's not true. I'm trying to catch him myself," confessed Dolly quite frankly. "I don't really think it's fair for Miss Clarke to compete for the prize, anyway. She ought to leave the chance to some beautiful, poor girl that needs that hundred dollars so much worse than she does!"
"A hundred dollars!" exclaimed Liane.
"Yes; just think of it! You must try for the prize, Liane."
"I don't know; I must think over it first. Wouldn't it seem conceited in me? As if I were sure that I was a raging beauty?" doubtfully.