"What is it, my dear? What's come to you?" she asked, in

alarm.

Beatrice gave a kind of groan.

"It's absurd--it's impossible," she said; "and yet, if by any

ridiculous chance you should be right, it's too horribly

horrible." She repeated her groan. "If by any ridiculous

chance you are right, the man will think that I have been

leading him on!"

"LEADING HIM ON!" Mrs. O'Donovan Florence suppressed a shriek

of ecstatic mirth. "There's no question about my being right,"

she averred soberly. "He wears his heart behind his eyeglass;

and whoso runs may read it."

"Well, then--" began Beatrice, with an air of desperation . . .

"But no," she broke off. "YOU CAN'T be right. It's

impossible, impossible. Wait. I'll tell you the whole story.

You shall see for yourself."

"Go on," said Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, assuming an attitude of

devout attention, which she retained while Beatrice (not

without certain starts and hesitations) recounted the fond tale

of Peter's novel, and of the woman who had suggested the

character of Pauline.

"But OF COURSE!" cried the Irishwoman, when the tale was

finished; and this time her shriek of mirth, of glee, was not

suppressed. "Of course--you miracle of unsuspecting innocence!

The man would never have breathed a whisper of the affair to

any soul alive, save to his heroine herself--let alone to you,

if you and she were not the same. Couple that with the eyes he

makes at you, and you've got assurance twice assured. You

ought to have guessed it from the first syllable he uttered.

And when he went on about her exalted station and her fabulous

wealth! Oh, my ingenue! Oh, my guileless lambkin! And you

Trixie Belfont! Where's your famous wit? Where are your

famous intuitions?"

"BUT DON'T YOU SEE," wailed Beatrice, "don't you see the

utterly odious position this leaves me in? I've been urging

him with all my might to tell her! I said . . . oh, the things

I said!" She shuddered visibly. "I said that differences of

rank and fortune could n't matter." She gave a melancholy laugh.

"I said that very likely she'd accept him. I said she couldn't

help being . . . Oh, my dear, my dear! He'll think--of course,

he can't help thinking--that I was encouraging him--that I was

coming halfway to meet him."

"Hush, hush! It's not so bad as that," said Mrs. O'Donovan

Florence, soothingly. "For surely, as I understand it, the man

doesn't dream that you knew it was about himself he was

speaking. He always talked of the book as by a friend of his;

and you never let him suspect that you had pierced his

subterfuge."




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