ow you would tell me at once if that were so."

"It is not so," said Mrs. Easterfield.

"Then I shall take my chances. With all this serenading and love-making
going on around me and around the woman I love with all my heart. I can
not stand and wait until I am told my time has come. The intensity and
the ardor of my feelings for her give me the right to speak to her.
Unless I know that some one else has stepped in before me and taken the
place I crave, I have decided to speak to her just as soon as I can. But
I thought it was due to you to come first and tell you."

"Mr. Lancaster," said Mrs. Easterfield, speaking very quietly, "if you
decide to go to Miss Asher and ask her to marry you, I know you will do
it, for I believe you are a man who keeps his word to himself, but I
assure you that if you do it you will never marry her. So you really
need not bother yourself about going to her; you can simply decide to do
it, and that will be quite sufficient; and you can stay here and hold
these long-stemmed dahlias for me as I cut them."

A troubled wistfulness showed itself upon the young man's face. "You
speak so confidently," he said, "that I almost feel I ought to believe
you. Why do you tell me that I am the only one of her suitors who would
certainly be rejected if he offered himself?"

Mrs. Easterfield dropped the long-stemmed dahlias she had been holding;
and, turning her eyes full upon Lancaster, she said, "Because you are
the only one of them toward whom she has no predilections whatever. More
than that, you are the only one toward whom she has a positive
objection. You are the only one who is an intimate friend of her uncle,
and who would be likely, by means of that intimate friendship, to bring
her into connection with the woman she hates, as well as with a relative
she despises on account of his intended marriage with that woman."

"All that should not count at all," cried Dick. "In such a matter as
this I have nothing to do with Captain Asher! I stand for myself and
speak for myself. What is his intended wife to me? Or what should she be
to her?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Easterfield, "all that would not count at all if
Olive Asher loved you. But you see she doesn't. I have had it from her
own lips that her uncle's intended marriage is, and must always be, an
effectual barrier between you and her."

"What" cried Dick. "Have you spoken to her of me? And in that way?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Easterfield, "I have.