ew it out.

"You didn't think seriously that I smoked?" she asked, glancing at him.

"Why not?" he asked; "any number of girls do."

She tore away some of the rice paper and lifted the tobacco to her nose,
and made a little grimace.

"Do you like to see women smoke?" she asked.

Mr. Spence admitted that there was something cosey about the custom,
when it was well done.

"And I imagine," he added, "that you'd do it well."

"I'm sure I should make a frightful mess of it," she protested modestly.

"You do everything well," he said.

"Even golf?" she inquired mischievously.

"Even golf, for a beginner and--and a woman; you've got the swing in
an astonishingly short time. In fact, you've been something of an
eye-opener to me," he declared. "If I had been betting, I should have
placed the odds about twenty to one against your coming from the West."

This Eastern complacency, although it did not lower Mr. Spence in her
estimation, aroused Honora's pride.

"That shows how little New Yorkers know of the West," she replied,
laughing. "Didn't you suppose there were any gentlewomen there?"

"Gentlewomen," repeated Mr. Spence, as though puzzled by the word,
"gentlewomen, yes. But you might have been born anywhere."

Even her sense of loyalty to her native place was not strong enough to
override this compliment.

"I like a girl with some dash and go to her," he proclaimed, and
there could be no doubt about the one to whom he was attributing these
qualities. "Savoir faire, as the French call it, and all that. I don't
know much about that language, but the way you talk it makes Mrs. Holt's
French and Susan's sound silly. I watched you last night when you were
stringing the Vicomte."

"Oh, did you?" said Honora, demurely.

"You may have thought I was talking to Mrs. Robert," he said.

"I wasn't thinking anything about you," replied Honora, indignantly.
"And besides, I wasn't I stringing' the Vicomte. In the West we don't
use anything like so much slang as you seem to use in New York."

"Oh, come now!" he exclaimed, laughingly, and apparently not the least
out of countenance, "you made him think he was the only pebble on the
beach. I have no idea what you were talking about."

"Literature," she said. "Perhaps that was the reason why you couldn't
understand it."

"He may be interested in literature," replied Mr. Spence, "but it
wouldn't be a bad guess to say that he was more interested in stocks and
bonds."

"H