lains; a set of Du Barry vases; a crystal-and-enamel box, designed
probably for some sacred purpose, but contributed by Pete as an excellent
receptacle for chocolates at her bedside. "The Boy with the Sword" for
the dining-room, Ver Meer's "Women at the Window," the small Bonnington,
and then, since Mathilde wanted the portrait of Mrs. Fitzherbert, and
Wayne felt a faint weariness with the English school, a compromise was
effected by the selection of Constable's landscape of a bridge. Wayne
kept constantly repeating that he was exactly like Warren Hastings,
astonished at his own moderation. They had hardly begun, indeed, before
Mathilde felt herself overcome by that peculiar exhaustion that overtakes
even the robust in museums.

Wayne guided her to a little sofa in a room of gold and jade.

"How beautifully you know your way about here!" she said. "I suppose
you've brought lots of girls here before me."

"A glorious army," said Pete, "the matron and the maid. You ought to see
my mother in a museum. She's lost before she gets well inside the
turnstile."

But Mathilde was thinking.

"How strange it is," she observed, "that I never should have thought
before about your caring for any one else. Pete, did you ever ask any one
else to marry you?"

Wayne nodded.

"Yes; when I was in college. I asked a girl to marry me. She was having
rather a rotten time."

"Were you in love with her?"

He shook his head, and in the silence shuffling and staccato footsteps
were heard, announcing the approach of a youthful art class and their
teacher. "Jade," said the voice of the lady, "one of the hardest of known
substances, has yet been beautifully worked from time immemorial--"

More pairs of eyes in that art class were fixed on the obviously guilty
couple in the corner than on the beautiful cloudy objects in the cases,
and it was not until they had all followed their guide to the armor-room,
and had grouped themselves about the casque of Joan of Arc, that Wayne
went on as if no interruption had occurred:

"If you want to know whether I have ever experienced anything like my
feeling for you since the first moment I saw you, I never have and never
shall, and thereto I plight thee my troth."

Mathilde turned her full face toward him, shedding gratitude and
affection as a lamp sheds light before she answered:

"You were terribly unkind to me yesterday."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I shall never forget the way you kissed me, as i