you don't, you sha'n't know who another queen is."

"No, mamma told me I must not make a bit of noise; it is not style, you
know, but you mustn't be so funny."

"Good heavens!" said Floyd.

"Oh! who is this coming?" A lady richly dressed was making her way
toward them. "The Queen of Sheba--coming to see Solomon," said Floyd,
as she came up to him. "Let me introduce you to a beautiful girl, Sarah
Dangerlie," she said, and drew him through the throng toward a door,
where he was presented to a tall and strikingly handsome girl and made
his bow and a civil speech, to which the young lady responded with one
equally polite and important. Other men were pressing around her, to
all of whom she made apt and cordial speeches, and Floyd fell back and
rejoined his little girl, whose face lit up at his return.

"Oh! I was so afraid you were going away with her."

"And leave you? Never, I'm not so easily disposed of."

"Everyone goes with her. They call her the Queen."

"Do they?"

"Do you like her?"

"Yes."

"You don't," she said, looking at him keenly.

"Yes, she is beautiful."

"Everyone says so."

"She isn't as beautiful as someone else I know," said Floyd, pleasantly.

"Isn't she? As whom?"

Floyd took hold of the child's hand and said, "Let's go and get some
supper."

"I don't like her," said the little girl, positively.

"Don't you?" said Floyd. He stopped and glanced across the room toward
where the girl had stood. He saw only the gleam of her fine shoulders as
she disappeared in the crowd surrounded by her admirers.

A little later Floyd met the young lady on the stairway. He had not
recognized her, and was passing on, when she spoke to him.

"I saw you talking to a little friend of mine," she began, then--"Over
in the corner," she explained.

"Oh! yes. She is sweet. They interest me. I always feel when I have
talked with a child as if I had got as near to the angels as one can get
on earth."

"Do you know I was very anxious to meet you," she said.

"Were you? Thank you. Why?"

"Because of a line of yours I once read."

"I am pleased to have written only one line that attracted your
attention," said Floyd, bowing.

"No, no--it was this--"The whitest soul of man or saint is black
beside a girl's."

"Beside a child's," said Floyd, correcting her.

"Oh! yes, so it is--'beside a child's.'"

Her voice was low and musical. Floyd glanced up and caught her look, and
the color deepened in her che