"Yes. Now we have had our first misunderstanding, but not in the
ordinary and derogatory sense in which the word is used--and it has only
served to cement us more closely together. Hasn't it?"

"It has."

"Then we will sit down again and talk things over quietly," he said.
"You have been standing long enough, after your long, hot ride."

He released her beautiful form from his embrace, though reluctantly, and
only then after another clinging kiss. She subsided again on to her
cushions.

"After my long, hot ride!" she echoed. "Why, it was nothing. I'm as
strong as a horse."

"You are perfect."

"Oh, and all this time you have not even lighted your pipe!" she cried,
gleefully, and radiant with smiles as she picked up that homely and
comforting implement where he had let it fall. "Now light it up,
dearest, and then we will be comfy, and talk."

"Yes. Well then, I suppose your father was rather abusing me on the
whole, Lalante; saying I was doing no good, and so forth. He has been
doing that more and more of late. Don't be afraid I shan't mind; nor
shall I feel at all ill-disposed towards him on that account."

"I'm sure you won't; first because you are you, secondly because you
know that he is utterly powerless to part us. Well then, he said again
that your affairs were rapidly going from bad to worse, and that you
would never do any good for yourself or anybody else."

"As for the first he's right. For the second--I'm not so sure."

Wyvern spoke with a new confidence that was a little strange to
himself--a confidence begotten of the very trust and confidence which
this girl had shown in him. His love for her thrilled every fibre of
his body and soul. Now that he knew beyond all shadow of a doubt that
nothing on earth could part them--and he did know it now--a new, and as
we have said, a strange confidence and self-reliance had been born
within him.

She, for her part, laughed--laughed lightly, happily.

"But I am," she answered. "For instance you have done a great deal of
good for _me_. You have turned my days into a sunlight of bliss, and my
nights into a dream beside which Heaven might pale. Is that nothing?"

"Child--child!" he said, still passing his hand caressingly over the
soft luxuriance of her hair. "Will it last--will it last? Remember you
are enthroning a poor sort of idol after all. What then?"

Again she laughed!--lightly, happily.

"What then? Last? Oh, you'll see. Yo