ome of the most delightful and the most terrible
moments of her life.

"Then why doesn't it affect me that way?" said Zaidie, as she took her
place in the little chamber, steel-walled and glass-roofed, and half
filled with instruments of which she, Vassar girl and all as she was,
could only guess the use.

"Well, to begin with, you are younger, which is an absolutely
unnecessary observation; and in the second place, perhaps you were
thinking about something else."

"By which I suppose you mean your lordship's noble self."

This was said in such a tone and with such an indescribable smile that
there immediately ensued a gap in the conversation, and a silence which
was a great deal more eloquent than any words could have made it.

When Miss Zaidie had got free again she put her hands up to her hair,
and while she was patting it into something like shape again she said:

"But I thought you brought me here to show me some experiments, and not
to----"

"Not to take advantage of the first real opportunity of tasting some of
the dearest delights that mortal man ever stole from earth or sea? Do
you remember that day when we were coming down from the big
glacier--when your foot slipped and I just caught you and saved a
sprained ankle?"

"Yes, you wretch, and went away next day and left something like a
broken heart behind you! Why didn't you--Oh what idiots you men can be
when you put your minds to it!"

"It wasn't quite that, Zaidie. You see, I'd promised your father the day
before--of course I was only a younger son then--that I wouldn't say
anything about realising _my_ ideal until I had realised his, and
so----"

"And so I might have gone to Europe with Uncle Russell's millions to buy
that man Byfleet's coronet, and pay the price----"

"Don't, Zaidie, don't! That is quite too horrible to think of, and as
for the coronet, well, I think I can give you one about as good as his,
and one that doesn't want re-gilding. Good Lord, fancy you married to a
thing like that! What could have made you think of it?"

"I didn't think," she said angrily; "I didn't think and I didn't feel.
Of course I thought that I'd dropped right out of your life, and after
that I didn't care. I was mad right through, and I'd made up my mind to
do what others did--take a title and a big position, and have the
outside as bright as I could get it, whatever the inside might be like.
I'd made up my mind to be a society queen abroad, and a miserabl