im out."

Don't you think he's very much in ea'nest?

"Oh, as the grave, or the asylum. I shouldn't like him to be in earnest
about me, if I were you."

"But that's just what he is!" Clementina told how the Russian had
lectured her, and wished her to go back to the country and work in the
fields.

"Oh, if that's all!" cried Miss Milray. "I was afraid it was another
kind of earnestness: the kind I shouldn't like if I were you."

"There's no danger of that, I guess." Clementina laughed, and Miss
Milray went on:

"Another of your admirers was here; but he was not so inconsolable,
or else be found consolation in staying on and talking about you, or
joking."

"Oh, yes; Mr. Hinkle," cried Clementina with the smile that the thought
of him always brought. "He's lovely."

"Lovely? Well, I don't know why it isn't the word. It suits him a great
deal better than some insipid girls that people give it to. Yes, I could
really fall in love with Mr. Hinkle. He's the only man I ever saw who
would know how to break the fall!"

It was lunch-time before their talk had begun to run low, and it swelled
again over the meal. Miss Milray returned to Mrs. Lander, and she made
Clementina confess that she was a little trying sometimes. But she
insisted that she was always good, and in remorse she went away as soon
as Miss Milray rose from table.

She found Mrs. Lander very much better, and willing to have had her
stay the whole afternoon with Miss Milray. "I don't want she should have
anything to say against me, to you, Clementina; she'd be glad enough to.
But I guess it's just as well you'a back. That scratched-out baron has
been he'e twice, and he's waitin' for you in the pahla', now. I presume
he'll keep comin' till you do see him. I guess you betta have it ova;
whatever it is."

"I guess you're right, Mrs. Lander."

Clementina found the Russian walking up and down the room, and as soon
as their greeting was over, he asked leave to continue his promenade,
but he stopped abruptly before her when she had sunk upon a sofa.

"I have come to tell you a strange story," he said.

"It is the story of that American friend of mine. I tell it to you
because I think you can understand, and will know what to advise, what
to do."

He turned upon his heel, and walked the length of the room and back
before he spoke again.

"Since several years," he said, growing a little less idiomatic in his
English as his excitement mounted, "he met a y