with Billy and Roland and the rest of them."

A mournful sound breaks from me. I search my pocket for a handkerchief wherewith to wipe away the solitary tear that meanders down my cheek. Need I say it is not there? Mr. Carrington, guessing my want, produces a very snowy article from somewhere and hands it to me.

"Do you want one?" he asks, tenderly, and presently I am dissolved in tears, my nose buried in my lover's cambric.

"I am sure you must hate me," I whisper, dismally. "I make you unhappy almost every time we meet. Mr. Carrington, will you try to forget what I said just now, and forgive me?"

"How can I forgive you anything when you call me Mr. Carrington?"

"Marmaduke, then." He presses me closer to him, and I rub my stained and humid countenance up and down against his coat. I am altogether penitent.

"After all, Marmaduke, may be I didn't say anything so very dreadful," I venture, at the end of a slight pause. "I was only thinking, and deciding on what I would like to give everybody when--when I was your wife. Was that very bad?"

"No; there was nothing to vex me in all that; it only showed me what a loving, generous little heart my pet has. But then, Phyllis, why did you give me so plainly to understand you were marrying me only for the sake of my odious money, by saying--what you did in your last speech?"

"What did I say?"

"That for the sake of being rich you would marry me (or any one else, your tone meant) even were I 'as ugly as sin.'"

"If I said that, it was an untruth, because if you were us ugly as Bobby De Vere, for instance, I most certainly would not marry you. I detest plain people."

"Well, at all events, I think you owe me some reparation for the pain you have inflicted."

"I do, indeed," I admit, eagerly. "Lay any penance you like upon me, and I will not shrink from it. I will do whatever you ask."

"Will you?" quickly. "Then kiss me of your own accord. I don't believe up to this, Phyllis, you have ever yet done so of your own sweet will.""I will do it now, then," I return, heroically, and straight away, raising myself on tiptoe, without the smallest pretense at prudery, I fling myself into his arms and kiss him with all 

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