entment against Lady MacNairne. She only laughed and said,
"Dear me, how interesting. What shall you do about it, Phil?"

"I shall show him that I am _his friend_," I answered decidedly. "I like
and admire him, and I hope I shall keep his friendship always."

"That's a pretty beginning to what may be a pretty romance, isn't it,
Tibe, darling?" asked Lady MacNairne.

I tried not to blush, but usually the more you try not to blush the more
you do. It was so with me then, just as it was when we were coming into
harbor at Volendam, and everybody said to Nell, "There is your cousin
Robert!" or "Why is your cousin Robert here?"

I was glad to stoop down and pat Tibe, who is the nicest dog I ever
knew. It's true, as Nell says, he is "geared ridiculously low"; and
having such a short nose and stick out lower jaw, when he wants to eat
or smell things, he has practically to stand on his head; also he can
never see anything that goes on under his chin. She says, too, that when
he's troubled, and a lot of lines meet together at one point in the
middle of his forehead, his face looks exactly like Clapham Junction;
and so it does. Nevertheless, he's beautiful, and has the sort of
features Old Masters gave dogs in pictures, features more like those of
people than animals, and a human expression in the eyes.

[Illustration: _I was glad to stoop down and pat Tibe_]

It is odd, Nell and I used to tell each other every thought we had,
and we talked over all the people we knew; but now, though I think a
good deal about Jonkheer Brederode, and wonder how he really does feel
toward us both, I never speak about him to Nell when I can avoid it, and
she never mentions his name to me.

I don't know what happened to make her suddenly nice to him at
Amsterdam, but something did, and she is nice still, only her manner is
different somehow. I can hardly tell what the difference is, but it is
there. At first, when we went to Spaakenberg and the other places,
before Lady MacNairne said that thing, she was agreeable to the Jonkheer
in a brilliant, bewitching, coquettish sort of way, as though she wished
after all to attract him. But since that evening at the Hotel Spaander,
in Volendam, she has been quite subdued. Jonkheer Brederode is quiet and
rather distant, too, and sometimes I think he speaks to Nell coldly, as
if he distrusted such shy signs of friendliness as she still shows.

Now, it seems to me that he and Mr. van Buren and Mr. Starr ar