ng my leg. She has played jokes on me more than
once before and made me feel rather an ass."

"Perhaps on this occasion the charming lady is playing a joke on both
of us," suggested Don Carlos lightly. "Let us drink a toast to her
together, although we are such deadly rivals."

He slid the decanter across the table invitingly, and Tony helped
himself to a drink, still imagining that Don Carlos was jesting, and
deciding that Myra had again made him feel "rather an ass."

"Cheerio!" he drawled, raising his glass after Don Carlos had poured
himself a drink. "All the best!"

"The toast is Miss Myra Rostrevor, the loveliest and most adorable girl
in the world, and may her lover get his heart's desire," cried Don
Carlos gaily, and drained his glass.

"Thanks awfully!" said Tony. "It's frightfully good of you, my dear
chap, not to take offence, and I feel sure you will be able to win Myra
over."

"It is my most ardent desire to win Myra over, my dear Standish," said
Don Carlos, as Tony rose to go. "Pray convey to her my most respectful
salutations, and beg her to receive me this afternoon."

It was with mingled amusement and exasperation that Myra listened to
Tony's account of the interview. She could not help feeling that Don
Carlos had turned the tables on Tony, and now had it in his power to
make her look ridiculous.

"I think he is the most conceited and impudent man in the world," she
commented. "And he's clever! If I refuse to go to Auchinleven, he
will tell the world it is because I am afraid of falling in love with
him. If you withdraw your invitation to him, he will explain it is
because you are afraid he might persuade me to elope with him. He will
flatter himself we are both afraid of him, and the affair will become
the joke of the season."

"Yes, I realise that, Myra," drawled Tony. "He's got that laugh on us,
so to speak, and I think it would be best to save our faces by
pretending the whole affair was a sort of practical joke on your part.
I don't suppose he'll try to make love to you again, and even if he
does you will know he is not in earnest."

"Tony, you duffer, let me assure you he is very much in earnest, and he
means to take me from you," said Myra. "And I warn you, my dear, that
I should probably have fallen for him and jilted you if he wasn't so
inordinately proud of himself and hadn't boasted that he would compel
me to love him. As it is, I am not sure that I am not in love wit