news of him?"

"I'm told that he's unluckily detained downtown. But, indeed, it's
charming to find you awaiting him too, Miss Heth."

Mrs. Heth sparkled, and declaimed of Willie's remissness. Canning stood
in the middle of the floor, hat and stick under his arm, looking without
pretences at Carlisle. Under the agreeable indifference of his seemingly
amused eye, she felt her color mounting, which only brightened her
loveliness. Perhaps it was not quite so easy to maintain the reasoning
of beautiful ladies here on the firing-line, as in the maidenly
cloister at home.

"Why are men the unreliable sex, Mr. Canning?" said she, laughing. "Here
Willie begs us for days to visit him at his rooms--I believe he thinks
there's something rather gay and wicked about it, you know, though mamma
picked them out for him!--and assures us on his honor as a banker that
he is in every afternoon by five at the very latest. So we inconvenience
ourselves and come. And now--look!"

"At what, Miss Heth? I trust nothing serious has happened?"

"Ah, but our time is so valuable, you see. We must leave without even
saying how-do-you-do. Don't you think so, mamma?"

"So it seems," said Mrs. Heth, and sank into a chair.

Canning smiled.

"Very pleasant little diggings he has here," he observed casually--"my
first glimpse of them. I happened to be coming in town on business, and
Kerr invited me particularly to drop in to see them, at half after
five sharp."

"Really! How _very_ fortunate we are! But, oh, why didn't you come a
little earlier and charitably help us through the wait? We've had
nothing on earth to do but read and reread 'The Cynic's Book of Girls.'"

"Had I ventured to hope that you were to be here," said he, with a
little bow--and was there the slightest, most daring stress upon the
pronouns?--"you may be sure I should have arrived long ago."

Carlisle, dauntless, looked full at him and laughed audaciously.

"I recall you now as a maker of the very prettiest speeches. And the
worst of it is--_I_ like them!... Mamma," she added, with fine, gay
courage, "it is sad to go just as the guests arrive. Yet don't you
think, really--"

"I'm afraid we must, my dear. Willie's evidently--"

But the need for tactics was fortunately at an end. If Carlisle had
drawn it rather fine, it was yet not too fine. The door flew open, and
in bounded Willie. Destiny climbed to the wheel once more.

Willie, though heated with hurry and worry, handl