lf to do such a deed as to leave me?"

"That's easy," she answered. "If your love for me was not strong enough to
conquer your love for Nelly Bascombe, then I'm very much afraid, father,
my love for you might go down in its turn, before my feelings for another
man. In a word, dad, if I felt I wasn't the queen of your home no more, I
should turn my attention to being queen of another."

He stared at that.

"Never heard anything more interesting, dear child," he said. "'Tis a
wonderful picture to see you reigning away from Wych Elm. But though I'm
sure there's a dozen men would thank their stars for such a wife as you, I
can't but feel in these hard times that few struggling bachelors would be
equal even to such a rare woman, unless it was in her power to bring 'em
something besides her fine self."

She smiled at that and rather expected it.

"I thought you'd remind me how it stood and I was a pauper if you so
willed," she replied. "But we needn't go into figures, because the man I'm
aiming at knows you very well, and he'll quite understand that if he was
to get me away from you, there won't be no flags flying when I go to him,
nor yet any marriage portion. He ain't what you might call a struggling
bachelor, however, but a pretty snug man by general accounts."

"And who might he be, I wonder?" asked John; because in his heart he
didn't believe for a moment there was any such a man in the world; and
when Jane declined to name Martin Ball, her father was more than ever
convinced that she was bluffing.

"We will suffer a month to pass, Jane," he told her. "Let a full month go
by for us to see where we stand and get the situation clear in our minds.
Certain it is that nought that could happen will ever cloud my undying
affection for you, and I well know I'm the light also to which your fine
daughterly devotions turn. So let this high matter be dead between us till
four weeks have slipped by."

"Like your sense to suggest it," she answered.

And the subject weren't named again between 'em till somebody else named
it.

But meantime John didn't hesitate to take the affair in strict secrecy to
the woman who had promised to wed him; and when the engagement was known,
of course, Martin Ball struck while the iron was hot and felt a great
bound of hope that Jane would now look upon him with very different eyes.
And even while he hoped, his spirit sank a bit now and again in her
company. But he put the weak side away and to