ronoun in this sentence that he would like to have repeated. It
was a friendly word. It established a sort of secret companionship. It
is the proud privilege of a man to know all about railway tickets; but
he rather preferred this association with her helpless innocence and
ignorance.

"I had no idea you were coming to-day. I rather like those surprise
parties. Mrs. Ross never thought of going until last evening, she says.
Oh, by the way, I saw you in the theatre last evening."

He almost started. He had quite forgotten that this self-possessed,
clear-eyed, pale girl was the madcap coquette whose caprices and griefs
had alternately fascinated and moved him on the previous evening.

"Oh indeed," he stammered. "It was a great pleasure to me--and a
surprise. Lieutenant Ogilvie played a trick on me. He did not tell me
before we went that--that you were to appear."

She looked amused.

"You did not know, then, when we met at Mrs. Ross's that I was engaged
at the Piccadilly Theatre?"

"Not in the least," he said, earnestly, as if he wished her distinctly
to understand that he could not have imagined such a thing to be
possible.

"You should have let me send you a box. We have another piece in
rehearsal. Perhaps you will come to see that."

Now if these few sentences, uttered by those two young people in the
noisy railway station, be taken by themselves and regarded, they will be
found to consist of the dullest commonplace. No two strangers in all
that crowd could have addressed each other in a more indifferent
fashion. But the trivial nothings which the mouth utters may become
possessed of awful import when accompanied by the language of the eyes;
and the poor commonplace sentences may be taken up and translated so
that they shall stand written across the memory in letters of flashing
sunlight and the colors of June. "_Ought we to take tickets?_" There was
not much poetry in the phrase but she lifted her eyes just then.

And now Colonel Ross and his wife appeared, accompanied by the only
other friend they could get at such short notice to join this scratch
party--a demure little old lady who had a very large house on Campden
Hill which everybody coveted. They were just in time to get comfortably
seated in the spacious saloon carriage that had been reserved for them.
The train slowly glided out of the station, and then began to rattle
away from the midst of London. Glimpses of a keener blue began to
appear. The gard