gloves. "When that happens,
what?"

"Why, then I shall certainly beg her to marry me," declared the
Irishman. "Faith, I'll go down on my knees to the girl then."

"Not until then?" I suggested. I was really anxious to get through this
baffling young man's nonsense. I wanted to find out what he really meant
to do about all this.

But he only shook his head with that mock-solemn air. He only said:
"Child, who knows what's going to happen to any of us, and when?"

Half the way back to the Cecil (Mr. Burke had hailed a taxi for me and
had then got into it with me) I was wondering what I am to say to my
mistress, Miss Million, about the happenings of my afternoon out. How am
I to break it to her that I spent nearly the whole of it in the society
of a young man against whom I have been warning her--Million--ever since
he first sent in his card?

"Does your Miss Million allow flowers?" Mr. Burke said cheerfully as we
whizzed down the Haymarket. "To you, I mean?"

It was an outrageous thing to say. But in that voice it somehow didn't
sound outrageous, or even disrespectful. The voice of the Celt, whether
Irish, Highland-Scottish, or Welsh, does always seem to have the soft
pedal down on it. And it's a most unfair advantage, that voice, for any
man to possess.

I said hastily: "Really, I don't think you need speak to me as if I were
a maid on her afternoon----"

Here I remembered that this was exactly what I was. And again I was
forced into reluctant laughter.

"You've no business to be taking the job on at all," said the young man
at my side in the taxi, quite gravely this time. "Was there nothing else
you could do, Miss Lovelace?"

"No; nothing."

"What about woman's true sphere? You ought to get married."

"Very easy to say that, for a man," I said. "How could I get married?"

Really earnestly he replied: "Have you tried?"

"No! Of course not!"

"You should," he said. He looked down at me in a curious, kindly way. He
said: "I've wangled things harder than that both for myself and my
friends. Men like a wife that can wear diamonds as if they belonged to
her; a wife that can talk the same language as some of their best
clients. Well! Here's a charming young girl, with looks, breeding, and a
fine old name. Can do!" he brought his flat hand down on the top of his
ebony cane, and added, "Have you a hatred of foreigners?"

"Foreigners?" I repeated, rather breathless again over the sudden
conversational ant