es bent on the
moist ruts of the drive, as though the matter had lost all interest for
him.

"Owen----"

He stopped again and faced her. "Look here, my dear, it's no sort of
use."

"What's no use?"

"Anything on earth you can any of you say."

She challenged him: "Am I one of 'any of you'?"

He did not yield. "Well, then--anything on earth that even YOU can say."
"You don't in the least know what I can say--or what I mean to."

"Don't I, generally?"

She gave him this point, but only to make another. "Yes; but this is
particularly. I want to say...Owen, you've been admirable all through."

He broke into a laugh in which the odd elder-brotherly note was once
more perceptible.

"Admirable," she emphasized. "And so has SHE."

"Oh, and so have you to HER!" His voice broke down to boyishness. "I've
never lost sight of that for a minute. It's been altogether easier for
her, though," he threw off presently.

"On the whole, I suppose it has. Well----" she summed up with a laugh,
"aren't you all the better pleased to be told you've behaved as well as
she?"

"Oh, you know, I've not done it for you," he tossed back at her, without
the least note of hostility in the affected lightness of his tone.

"Haven't you, though, perhaps--the least bit? Because, after all, you
knew I understood?"

"You've been awfully kind about pretending to."

She laughed. "You don't believe me? You must remember I had your
grandmother to consider."

"Yes: and my father--and Effie, I suppose--and the outraged shades of
Givre!" He paused, as if to lay more stress on the boyish sneer: "Do you
likewise include the late Monsieur de Chantelle?"

His step-mother did not appear to resent the thrust. She went on, in the
same tone of affectionate persuasion: "Yes: I must have seemed to you
too subject to Givre. Perhaps I have been. But you know that was not my
real object in asking you to wait, to say nothing to your grandmother
before her return."

He considered. "Your real object, of course, was to gain time."

"Yes--but for whom? Why not for YOU?"

"For me?" He flushed up quickly. "You don't mean----?"

She laid her hand on his arm and looked gravely into his handsome eyes.

"I mean that when your grandmother gets back from Ouchy I shall speak to
her----" "You'll speak to her...?"

"Yes; if only you'll promise to give me time----"

"Time for her to send for Adelaide Painter?"

"Oh, she'll undoubtedly send for Adelaide Painter!"