"You are very nice, I think," she said with disconcerting detachment.
"At first I was afraid you didn't like nonsense, but you really got through very well, considering the trouble I caused you. But I'm in trouble myself now. Papa will land to-morrow. He's the grandest, dearest man in all this world, but when he finds that I'm going to act in Mr.
Searles's play he will be terribly cut up. Of course it will not be for long. Even if it's a big success, I'm to be released in three months.
Constance and Sir Cecil think I owe it to myself to appear in the piece; they're good enough to say nobody else can do it so well--which is a question. I'm going to give all the money I earn to the blind soldiers."
(I wished the tears in her eyes didn't make them more lovely still!)
"Being what you are and all you are, it would be brutal for me to add to the number of things you have to tell your father. I'm a very obscure person, and he is a gentleman of title and otherwise distinguished. You are the Honorable Miss----"
"Papa has said numbers of times," she began softly, looking far out across the blue Sound--"he has said, oh, very often, that he'll never stop troubling about me until--until I'm happily married."
"When you came here you wore a wedding-ring," I remarked casually.
"It was only a 'property' ring, to help deceive you. I bought it in Chicago. When Aunt Alice came I threw it away."
"The finger seems lonesome without it," I said. "If I get you another, I hope you'll take better care of it."
"If you should put it there," she replied, looking fixedly at the hand, "that would be very, very different."
THE END
BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON
LADY LARKSPUR
THE MADNESS OF MAY
THE VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS