?"

"You make it easier."

"What easier?"

"What I'm going to say to you."

Amaryllis looked up, surprised.

"Before I met you, Miss Caldegard, I had got thoroughly into the way of
thinking of myself not as an elderly man, but as a confirmed bachelor.
For more than a month I have been enjoying your company and admiring
your goodness and beauty more and more every day, without perceiving,
until some few days ago, that I did so at great risk to myself. If I
were twenty years younger I should put off speaking like this, in the
hope of gaining ground by a longer association with you. But to-day I
have made up my mind that my best chance of winning at least your
affection lies in telling you simply and at once how completely you have
conquered mine."

That this must come sometime, Amaryllis no doubt had foreseen; yet at
this moment she felt as much surprised and embarrassed as if she had
never read the signs.

If a woman, mother or sister, could have asked her yesterday whether she
were willing to marry Randal Bellamy, she might, perhaps, have answered
that she liked him awfully, that she valued his love, and felt very sure
of being happier as his wife than as an old maid; but now, with the
famous lawyer's kind and handsome face before her, and that pleading
note mixing unexpectedly with the splendid tones of his voice, her
delicacy rebelled against taking so much more than she could give.

Twice she tried to speak; but, instead of words to her tongue, there
came a tiresome lump in her throat and a horrid swimminess over her eyes
which she was determined should not culminate in tears.

"What a dear you are, Sir Randal!" she said huskily. "But--but--oh! I do
like you most awfully, but--I can't say what I mean."

The new beauty in the face which he had from the first thought so
lovely, the new brightness of tears in the dark-brown eyes, and the
womanly tenderness which he had never before found in her voice, made
his heart quicken as never since he was thirty. That extra beat, if it
told him that he was still young, warned him also of the pain which is
the tribute imposed on conquered youth.

But before he found words, Caldegard appeared on the terrace, shouting
that it was five minutes past one, and lunch waiting.

The pair walked side by side to the house.

"Don't answer me to-day, Amaryllis," he said, "but just turn me and it
over in your mind now and then between this and Friday."

CHAPTER III.

"