ion: I'm going to marry your sister, and
though you've tried your best to stop me, you can't."

"I wonder any man, even you, should want Diana after the way she's
behaved," I said sullenly.

"Thanks for that expressive 'even.' Your weapons are pretty sharp,
little lady! But you're a child, and you're Diana's sister, so I bear no
malice. I'm the sort of man, it happens, who doesn't stop to bother much
about the way a very beautiful girl 'behaves' to another fellow. I love
Diana, and I'd take her across that other fellow's dead body if she'd
just stabbed him."

"She has stabbed Captain March, though not mortally, I hope," said I.
"But she has behaved as badly to you as to him, in a way."

"You mean the affair of the photograph, I suppose," Major Vandyke
remarked calmly. "She has explained that. Not that I asked her to. All I
did was to put into a letter the story of that little scene in which you
were mixed up in March's tent. She answered voluntarily that March must
have bribed the photographer to sell him a copy, though the man had been
given strict instructions to print only one--for me. March had begged
her for a picture, when he heard from Mrs. Main that she'd been sitting
for that fellow, who's supposed to be a great artist; and Di put him off
in some laughing way. I was pretty certain, when I noticed there was no
signature on the portrait March had, that he'd not got the photograph
from Diana herself. No doubt he thought all fair in love or war."

"You judge him by yourself," I said. "But never mind! I shan't ask you
not to believe Di, but to believe your own common sense. Think--or
pretend to think what you like."

"I shall," he assured me; "that's a great principle of mine! As a
general rule it makes for happiness and success. But we're getting away
from my object in speaking to you, when I know you're wishing me in
kingdom come."

"Not there," said I. He laughed out aloud, and anybody looking at us
might have imagined us the best of friends.

"What a little devil you are! Where did you inherit it from?"

"From French chocolate, perhaps," said I. "What is it you want with me,
Major Vandyke? Tell me, and get it over."

"I want to know exactly what it is in me that you dislike so much?"

"Only everything."

"That's a large order, and not very explicit. Would you have disliked me
if I hadn't interfered with--a--er--a person more to your taste; in
other words, with Captain Eagleston March?"

"Oh, of c