and she likes Syd all right. He's no
fool!"

"I suppose not," Arranmore answered. "He's of a type, you know, which
has sprung up during my--absence from civilization. You want to grow up
with it to appreciate it properly. I don't think he's good enough for
Sybil."

Lady Caroom sighed.

"Sybil's a dear girl," she said, "although she's a terrible nuisance to
me. I shouldn't be at all surprised either if she developed views. I
wish you were a marrying man, Arranmore. I used to think of you myself
once, but you would be too old for me now. You're exactly the right age
for Sybil."

Arranmore smiled. He had quite forgotten his letters. Lady Caroom
always amused him so well.

"She is very like what you were at her age," he remarked. "What a pity
it was that I was such a poverty-stricken beggar in those days. I am
sure that I should have married you."

"Now I am beginning to like you," she declared, settling down more
comfortably in her chair. "If you can keep up like that we shall be
getting positively sentimental presently, and if there's anything I
adore in this world--especially before luncheon--it is sentiment. Do
you remember we used to waltz together, Arranmore?"

"You gave me a glove one night," he said. "I have it still."

"And you pressed my hand--and--it was in the Setons' conservatory--how
bold you were."

"And the next day," he declared, in an aggrieved tone, "I heard that you
were engaged to Caroom. You treated me shamefully."

"These reminiscences," she declared, "are really sweet, but you are most
ungrateful. I was really almost too kind to you. They were all
fearfully anxious to get me married, because Dumesnil always used to say
that my complexion would give out in a year or two, and I wasted no end
of time upon you, who were perfectly hopeless as a husband. After all,
though, I believe it paid. It used to annoy Caroom so much, and I
believe he proposed to me long before he meant to so as to get rid of
you."

"I," Arranmore remarked, "was the victim."

She sat up with eyes suddenly bright.

"Upon my word," she declared, "I have an idea. It is the most charming
and flattering thing, and it never occurred to me before. After all, it
was not eccentricity which caused you to throw up your work at the
Bar--and disappear. It was your hopeless devotion to me. Don't
disappoint me now by denying it. Please don't! It was the announcement
of my engagement, wasn't it?"

"And it has taken you all these