Fancy, "you might want to start higher, in another book.
We can't expect to live all our lives on this one: and there oughtn't to
be any come-down."

Palmerston smiled and waved his manuscript with an air of mastery.
He had thought of this.

"There's Royalty!"

"O-oh!" Fancy caught her breath. She felt sure now of his genius.

"We must feel our way," said Palmerston; "I believe in flyin' as high as
you like so long as you're on safe ground. Of course," he went on,
"there _is_ a danger. I don't know who _really_ lives in Grovener
Square at Number 20; but they're almost sure not to be called Delauncy,
and so there's no real hurt to their feelin's."

"Mrs Bowldler might know."

"You don't understand," explained Palmerston, who seemed, since breaking
the ice of his confession, to have grown some inches taller, and
altogether more masterful. "She don't know why I put all these
questions to her. She sets it down to curiosity: when, all the time,
I'm _pumpin'_ her."

"Oh!" Fancy collapsed.

Palmerston resumed:--

"'The second footman ushered him to the boudoir,
where already he had lit several lamps, casting a
subdued shade of rose colour. The Lady Herm
Intrude reclined on a console in an attitude which
a moment since had been one of despair, but was
now languid to the point of carelessness.'"

"What's a console?" inquired Fancy.

"They have one in all the best drawing-rooms," answered Palmerston.
"Mrs Bowldler--"

"Oh, go on!" She was beginning to feel jealous, or almost jealous.

"'She was attired in a gown of old Mechlin, with
a deep fall and an indication of orange blossoms,
and carried a shower bouquet of cluster roses, the--

"No, I've scratched that out. It said 'the gift of the bridegroom,' and
I got it from a fashionable wedding; but it won't do in this place."

'Amid these luxurious surroundings Ernest felt
his brain in a whirl. He cast himself on his knees
before the recumbent figure on the console which
gave no sign of life unless a long-drawn and
half-stifled sob, which seemed to strangle its owner,
might be so interpreted.
"Lady Herm Intrude," he cried in broken accents, "for
the second time, I love you."'"

"It's lovely, Palmerston! Lovely!" gasped Fancy. "Why was he loving her
for the second time?"

"He was _telling_ her for the second time. He had loved her from the
first--it's all in the earl