y smiles of
yesterday.'

'Then,' says Barndale, 'I'll go and ask Jimmy.'

'You will do nothing of the kind.'

'Why?'

'Because you are too polite, Mr. Barndale, to pry into a lady's
secrets.'

'There is a secret here, then?'

'No.'

'You are contradictory, Miss Leland?'

'You are obtuse, Mr. Barndale. If there be a secret it is as open
as----'

'As what?'

'As your door was yesterday when you spoke to your servant.'

'Then you----?'

'Yes,' responds Miss Lilian, severely. I know you gentlemen. You were
going home until you met that idle and dissolute James, by accident.
Then you suddenly change your mind, and go out to Constantinople.' There
for a moment she pauses and follows up her victory over the now crimson
Barndale with a terrible whisper. '_On the spree_! Oh, you need scarcely
look surprised. I have learned your vulgar terms from James.'

'I hope I am not so criminal as you fancy,' says Barndale, finding the
proof of his guilt fall less heavily than he had feared.

'If you were thrice as criminal, this is not the tribunal,' and she
waves her parasol round her feet, 'at which the felon should be tried.'

'But, Miss Leland, if it were not because I met your brother that--I
came out here! If there were another reason!'

'If there were another reason I confess my smile out of time and
apologise for it.' And therewith she shot him through and through with
another smile. It was fatal to both, for he in falling caught her with
him. These things have a habit of occurring all at once, and in anything
rather than the meditated fashion.

'Lilian,' said the young Barndale, inwardly delirious at his own daring
and the supernal beauty of her smile, but on the outside of him quite
calm and assured, and a trifle masterful, 'I came because I learned that
you were com-ing. If you are displeased with me for that, I will land at
Corfu and go home. And bury my misery,' he added in a tone so hollow and
sepulchral that you or I had laughed.

Miss Leland sat quite grave with downcast eyes.

'Are you displeased?'

'I have no right to be displeased,' she murmured.

Of course you and I can see quite clearly that he might have kissed her
there and then, and settled the business, murmuring 'Mine own!' But he
was in love, which we are not, and chose to interpret that pretty murmur
wrongly. So there fell upon the pair an awkward silence. He was the
first to break it.

'I will land at Corfu,' he said, with intense