l call to-day--this afternoon, and perhaps your father will explain.
And now, Sylvia, that is enough about other people and other things. Let
us talk of ourselves."

Sylvia turned her face with a fond smile. She was a delicate and dainty
little lady, with large grey eyes and soft brown hair. Her complexion
was transparent, and she had little color in her cheeks. With her oval
face, her thin nose and charming mouth she looked very pretty and sweet.
But it was her expression that Paul loved. That was a trifle sad, but
when she smiled her looks changed as an overcast sky changes when the
sun bursts through the clouds. Her figure was perfect, her hands and
feet showed marks of breeding, and although her grey dress was as
demure as any worn by a Quakeress, she looked bright and merry in the
sunshine of her lover's presence. Everything about Sylvia was dainty and
neat and exquisitely clean: but she was hopelessly out of the fashion.
It was this odd independence in her dress which constituted another
charm in Paul's eyes.

The place was too public to indulge in love-making, and it was very
tantalising to sit near this vision of beauty without gaining the
delight of a kiss. Paul feasted his eyes, and held Sylvia's grey-gloved
hand under cover of her dress. Further he could not go.

"But if you put up your sunshade," he suggested artfully.

"Paul!" That was all Sylvia said, but it suggested a whole volume of
rebuke. Brought up in seclusion, like the princess in an enchanted
castle, the girl was exceedingly shy. Paul's ardent looks and eager
wooing startled her at times, and he thought disconsolately that his
chivalrous love-making was coarse and common when he gazed on the
delicate, dainty, shrinking maid he adored.

"You should not have stepped out of your missal, Sylvia," he said sadly.

"Whatever do you mean, dearest?"

"I mean that you are a saint--an angel--a thing to be adored and
worshipped. You are exactly like one of those lovely creations one sees
in mass-books of the Middle Ages. I fear, Sylvia," Paul sighed, "that
you are too dainty and holy for this work-a-day world."

"What nonsense, Paul! I'm a poor girl without position or friends,
living in a poor street. You are the first person who ever thought me
pretty."

"You are not pretty," said the ardent Beecot, "you are divine--you are
Beatrice--you are Elizabeth of Thuringia--you are everything that is
lovely and adorable."

"And you are a silly boy," repl