hink--I mean wouldn't it be frightful cheek? It's not
only her being a queen and all that; but other things. She's far too
good for me in every way. I'm not clever or anything of that kind. And
then there's her father."

"I shouldn't worry about him, if I were you," said Gorman. "What
you've got to consider is not the father but the girl. If she's as
much in love with you as you are with her----"

"She couldn't possibly be," said Phillips.

"I don't suppose she could," said Gorman. "Let's say half. If she's
half as much in love as you are she'll manage the old man."

"I think----" said Phillips, "I really think she does like me a
little."

Then he told Gorman something, not very much, about the scene in the
cave. He spoke in broken sentences. He never quite completed any
confidence, but Gorman got at something like the facts.

"If you've gone as far as that," he said. "If, as I understand, you've
kissed her, then----I don't profess to give an expert opinion in
matters of this kind, but I think you ought to ask her to marry you.
In fact, it will be rather insulting if you don't."

"And you really think I have a chance? But you don't know. She might
marry any one in the world. She's the most beautiful girl that any one
has ever seen. Her eyes----"

Gorman knew that Miss Daisy Donovan was a nice, fresh-looking, plump
young woman with no particular claim to be called beautiful. He
stopped listening. His mind had suddenly fixed on a curious point in
Phillips' story of the scene in the cave. He waited until the boy,
like Rosalind's "very good lover," was "gravelled for lack of matter."
Then he said:

"Where did you say that you were when that happened--the kissing, I
mean?"

"In a cave," said Phillips. "In a huge cave. I had helped her to climb
up on to the cisterns, and----"

"Cisterns!" said Gorman. "What the devil did you put cisterns into a
cave for?"

"We didn't put them. They were there. Galvanized iron cisterns. Huge
things. Oh, I promised I wouldn't tell any one about those cisterns.
They're part of the secret of the island. The Queen made me promise.
I wish I hadn't told you."

"You've broken your promise now," said Gorman. "You may just as well
go on."

It took some time to persuade Phillips to go on; and all Gorman's
sophistries would not induce the boy to say another word about the
cisterns in the cave. They were the Queen's part of the mystery of the
island and he would not speak of them. But