ing wearisome to him in such chronicles; and as he sat listening,
and now and then prompting with some forgotten detail, anyone who had
happened on the scene would have accounted it pleasant to watch the
young fellow and the old man talking together over the youth of her who
had been mother to one and daughter to the other.

"See!" said Tristrem at last, when his grandfather had given the brooch
into his keeping. "See! I have something for her too." And with that he
displayed a ruby, unset, that was like a clot of blood. "I shall have it
put in a ring," he explained, "but this might do for a bonnet-pin;" and
then he produced a green stone, white-filmed, that had a heart of
oscillating flame.

Mr. Van Norden had taken the ruby in his hand and held it off at arm's
length, and then between two fingers, to the light, that he might the
better judge of its beauty. But at the mention of the bonnet-pin he
turned to look:

"Surely, Tristrem, you would not give her that; it's an opal."

"And what if it is?"

"But it is not lucky."

Tristrem smiled blithely, with the bravery that comes of
nineteenth-century culture.

"It's a pearl with a soul," he answered, "that's what it is. And if
Viola doesn't like it I'll send it to you."

"God forbid," Mr. Van Norden replied; "if anyone sent me an opal I would
swear so hard that if the devil heard me he'd go in a corner and cross
himself."

At this threat Tristrem burst out laughing, and the old gentleman,
amused in spite of himself at the fantasy of his own speech, burst out
laughing too.

Then there was more chat, and more reminiscences, and much planning as
to how Tristrem should best assume the rank and appanages of the married
state. Tristrem dined with his grandfather that evening, and when Mr.
Van Norden started out to his club for a game of whist, Tristrem
accompanied him as far as the club door.

When they parted, Tristrem was in such spirits that he could have run up
to Central Park and back again. "Divinities of Pindar," he kept
exclaiming--a phrase that he had caught somewhere--"divinities of
Pindar, she is mine."

Thereafter, for several days, he lived, as all true lovers do, on air
and the best tenderloins he could obtain.

VII.

One morning Tristrem found the sliced oranges companied by a note from
Her. It was not long, but he read it so often that it became lengthy in
spite of the writer. The cottage, it informed him, which had been taken
for the s