!" Lady Ruth murmured. "Wingrave, won't you try and be
friends with me?"

"I will try--certainly," he answered. "You would be surprised, however,
if you could realize the effect of a long period of enforced seclusion
upon a man of my--"

"Don't!" she shrieked; "stop!"

"My temperament, I was about to say," he concluded. "There was a time
when I am afraid I might have been tempted, under such circumstances as
these, to forget that you were no longer free, to forget everything that
except we were alone, and that you--are as beautiful as ever you were!"

"Yes!" she murmured, moving imperceptibly a little nearer towards him.

He picked up the check and gave it to her.

"I am no actor," he said, looking at her steadily. "At present, I make
no conditions. But--"

She leaned towards him. He took her face between his hands and kissed
her on the lips.

"I may make them later," he said. "I reserve my right."

She looked at him for a moment, and dropped her veil.

"Please take me down to my carriage," she asked.

THE INDISCRETION OF THE MARCHIONESS

"I am perfectly certain," Juliet declared, "that we ought not to be
here."

"That," Aynesworth remarked, fanning himself lightly with his pocket
handkerchief, "may account for the extraordinary sense of pleasure which
I am now experiencing. At the same time, I can't see why not."

"I only met you this afternoon--a few hours ago. And here we are,
absolutely wedged together on these seats--and my chaperon is dozing
half the time."

"Pardon me," Aynesworth objected, "I knew you when you were a child."

"For one day!"

"Nevertheless," Aynesworth persisted, "the fact remains. If you date our
acquaintance from this afternoon, I do not. I have never forgotten the
little girl in short frocks and long black hair, who showed me where the
seagulls built, and told me Cornish fairy stories."

"It was a very long time ago," she remarked.

"Four years," he answered; "for you, perhaps, a long time, because
you have changed from a child--into a woman. But for a man approaching
middle age--as I am--nothing!"

"That is all very well," she answered, "but I am not sure that we ought
to be in the gallery at Covent Garden together, with a chaperon who will
sleep!"

"She will wake up," he declared, "with the music."

"And I," she murmured, "will dream. Isn't it lovely?"

He smiled.

"I wonder how it really seems to you," he remarked. "We are breathing an
atmosphere hot wi