the young woman in the veiled
hat and the gray box-coat, identified her, and discovered in a
petrifying shock of astoundment that she was not Miss Elsa Craigmiles's
fancied double, but Miss Craigmiles herself.

"Why, Mr. Ballard--of all people!" she cried, with a brow-lifting of
genuine or well-assumed surprise. And then in mock consternation: "Don't
tell me that _you_ are the good-natured gentleman I drove out of his
section in the sleeping-car."

"I sha'n't; because I don't know how many more there are of me," said
Ballard. Then, astonishment demanding its due: "Did I only dream that
you were going to Europe with the Herbert Lassleys, or----"

She made a charming little face at him.

"Do you never change your plans suddenly, Mr. Ballard? Never mind; you
needn't confess: I know you do. Well, so do I. At the last moment I
begged off, and Mrs. Lassley fairly scolded. She even went so far as to
accuse me of not knowing my own mind for two minutes at a time."

Ballard's smile was almost grim.

"You have given me that impression now and then; when I wanted to be
serious and you did not. Did you come aboard with that party at Omaha?"

"Did I not? It's my--that is, it's cousin Janet Van Bryck's party; and
we are going to do Colorado this summer. Think of that as an exchange
for England and a yachting voyage to Tromsoe!"

This time Ballard's smile was affectionately cynical.

"I didn't suppose you ever forgot yourself so far as to admit that there
was any America west of the Alleghany Mountains."

Miss Elsa's laugh was one of her most effective weapons. Ballard was
made to feel that he had laid himself open at some vulnerable point,
without knowing how or why.

"Dear me!" she protested. "How long does it take you to really get
acquainted with people?" Then with reproachful demureness: "The man has
been waiting for five full minutes to take your dinner order."

One of Ballard's gifts was pertinacity; and after he had told the waiter
what to bring, he returned to her question.

"It is taking me long enough to get acquainted with you," he ventured.
"It will be two years next Tuesday since we first met at the Herbert
Lassleys', and you have been delightfully good to me, and even chummy
with me--when you felt like it. Yet do you know you have never once gone
back of your college days in speaking of yourself? I don't know to this
blessed moment whether you ever had any girlhood; and that being the
case----"

"Oh, sp