in
Bluff Park. Colorado will do you both no end of good. I feel as if I
needed it myself. I haven't energy enough to read Mr. Martin's 'Life of
the Prince Consort.' I shall speak to Mrs. Belding as soon as she
returns."

"Do, by all means. I should like to go, but mamma would not spend three
nights in a sleeping-car to see the Delectable Mountains themselves."

He rose and walked about the room, looking at the flower and the young
artist from different points of view, and seeing new beauties in each
continually. There were long lapses of conversation, in which Alice
worked assiduously and Farnham lounged about the conservatory, always
returning with a quick word and a keen look at the face of the girl. At
last he said to himself: "Look here! She is not a baby. She is nearly
twenty years old. I have been wondering why her face was so steady and
wise." The thought that she was not a child tilled his heart with
pleasure and his face with light. But his volubility seemed to die
suddenly away. He sat for a good while in silence, and started a little
as she looked up and said:

"Now, if you will be very gentle, you can see my sketch and tell me
what to do next."

It was a pretty and unpretentious picture that she had made. The flower
was faithfully though stiffly given, and nothing especially remarkable
had been attempted or achieved. Farnham looked at the sketch with eyes
in which there was no criticism. He gave Alice a word or two of
heartier praise for her work than she knew she deserved. It was rather
more than she expected, and she was not altogether pleased to be so
highly commended, though she could hardly have said why. Perhaps it was
because it made her think less of his critical faculty. This was not
agreeable, for her admiration of him from her childhood had been one of
the greatest pleasures of her life. She had regarded him as children
regard a brilliant and handsome young uncle. She did not expect from
him either gallantry or equality of treatment.

"There! Do not say too much about it--you will make me ashamed of it.
What does it lack?"

"Nothing, except something on the right to balance the other side. You
might sketch in roughly a half-opened flower on the vine about there,"
indicating the place.

She took her pencils and began obediently to do what he had suggested.
He leaned over her shoulder, so near her she could feel his breath on
the light curls that played about her ear. She wished he would mo