ke a slap in
the face: "If you didn't spend so many evenings at Doctor Bertie's, you
would get both _Fidelia_ and _Joan_ in better drawing."

He flushed and drew himself up, with the stabbed _amour propre_
prompting him to make some stinging retort contrasting the wells of
truth with the brackish waters of sheer worldliness. Then he saw how
inadequate it would be; how utterly impossible it was to meet this
charmingly vindictive young person upon any grounds save those of her
own choosing.

"That is the first really unkind thing I have ever heard you say," was
the mild reproach which was all that the reactionary second thought
would sanction.

"Unkind to whom?--to you, or to Miss Farnham?"

"Ask yourself," he countered weakly; and she laughed at him.

"There is another of your failings, Kenneth. You haven't always the
courage of your convictions. What you are thinking is that I am a
spiteful little cat. Why don't you say it out loud, like a man?"

"Because I'm not thinking it," he denied, adding: "But I do think you
are a little inclined to be unfair to Miss Charlotte."

"Am I? Let us see if I am. I accuse her of nothing but a slavish
devotion to custom and the conventions. What did she say when you read
her the chapter before this one: where _Fidelia_ goes down to the
dining-room at midnight and finds _Fleming_ breaking into the
silver-safe where the money is hidden?"

"I'm not reading the story to her," he admitted, and again she laughed.

"But you do talk it over with her; you couldn't help doing that," she
persisted.

"Sometimes," he allowed.

"Well, what did she say when you came to that part where _Fidelia_ makes
_Fleming_ sit down while she tries to convince him that house-breaking
is a crime. You don't dare tell me what she said."

Griswold did it, with a firm convincement that he was thereby breaking a
sacred confidence. But the alluring lips and eyes were irresistible when
he was fairly within their influence.

"I merely suggested the scene as something that might be done," he
explained. "She did not approve of it. Her objection was that the
_Fidelias_ in real life don't do such things."

"They don't," was Miss Margery's flippant agreement. "And your letting
your _Fidelia_ do it is the one redeeming thing you have done in your
drawing of her. Just the same, with all your ingenuity you leave one
with the firm conviction that she will never, under any circumstances,
do such an unconventional thi