"Well, anybody will tell you—I'm no good at explaining things. Ask your mother when you get home, and then remember that I said that you were Queen Cophetua, and I the Beggar Man."

She echoed his last word incredulously. "Beggar Man! How can you be, with all—this?"

"All this—" he answered dryly—"is all I have, and there is no man so poor as he who has only money. Now do you understand?"

The car had turned a corner and was slowing down. "I think this must be your home," he said, and Faith gave a sigh. It had been such a heavenly drive; why did all beautiful things end so soon?

He opened the door of the car and gave her his hand. "Good-bye, Queen Cophetua," he said. His grey eyes rested on her serious little face. "Or perhaps we won't say good-bye, as I hope we shall meet again."

The color surged to her cheeks; a little ripple of laughter flickered into her brown eyes.

"Oh, good-bye, Beggar Man," she answered, and then caught her breath at her own daring. But the man only laughed, and presently the big car was gliding slowly away down the road.

Faith watched it go before she turned indoors. She felt very much as Cinderella must have done when she got back to the kitchen from the Prince's ball.

Her mother, who had seen the car drive away, met her in the narrow hall; she was a sweet-looking woman with tired eyes and a perpetual cough.

"Well, little girl?" she said, and there was a world of anxiety in her voice.

Faith kissed her, and explained: "I fainted—it was so hot—and he brought me home in his car." Her eyes fell for some reason which she could not understand. "He was very kind," she added.

"And you don't know who he is?" her mother asked anxiously.

Faith shook her head. "He didn't tell me, but...mother—who was King Cophetua?"

They were in the little sitting-room now, where tea was laid ready, and the twins sitting up to table. Mrs. Ledley was busying herself with the teapot. She answered absently that King Cophetua was only a man in a story, a king who married a beggar maid.

"But it was only a story, Faith," she added earnestly. "One of those stories which couldn't end happily even 

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