pping the
hope. "I notice he looks at you most."

Dora gazed at herself in the glass, and the reflection of the young
rounded face and the candid eyes and the pretty hair was so pleasing
that the instinct of conquest braced her.

"After all, Bee," she said more brightly, "he is really _very_ nice. And
except when you're behind him you don't notice he's going bald. Perhaps
he's a man you'd get to like a good deal after you were married to him."

"That's what I feel," said Bee, and added in an extremely virtuous tone,
"if I didn't I should not think of him for one minute. How girls can
marry really old men or horrid men, I simply don't know. I think it's
just disgraceful. But with Hugh Kinross it is _very_ different and
people think a lot of you if your husband's an author and you get asked
_everywhere_."

She returned energetically to her chiffon and twisted it in a most
artistic fashion upon a charming hat.

[Illustration: "She returned energetically to her chiffon, and twisted
it in a most artistic fashion."]

Dora jumped down also from the bed and began to collect her own
belongings. Then she stopped short one second; pretty as she was she had
a latent sense of humour.

"It would be rather funny, Bee, after all this talk if he'd never given
either of us a serious thought," she said. "What makes you so sure?"

"Oh, lots of things," said Miss Bee. "Look at the chocolates and things
he brings us--and didn't he make Mrs. Gowan ask us to join his party for
the Caves? And look at the things he says actually to us--that
quotation, for instance, when we were on the seat in the
summer-house,--"

"'How happy could I be with either,
Were t'other dear charmer away!'"

murmured Dora softly.

"Yes, and lots of things like that. A man of his age doesn't say them as
Charlie or Graham might. Love is a much more serious thing with a real
man than with a boy."

"Yes, I suppose so," sighed Dora.

"And don't you remember what Effie Gowan told us she had heard her
mother laughing and telling her father? That when he asks after us he
always says, 'Well, how are the ducky little girls?' Or else, 'When are
you going to bring the little pets down?'"

"Y-yes," said Dora, "yes, I suppose he must be serious then--as he's not
a boy."

"And Mrs. Gowan told me privately that she really did hope Hugh would
marry and that she thought a bright young wife would do him a world of
good and get him out of all his old-fashioned wa