whose address she has given me, so that I may make arrangements at once for my nieces' portraits. She tells me that he has excellent prospects."
"Oh!" murmured Marcia, in sudden crimson embarrassment. She could actually feel Kersley's triumphant smile behind the dining-room portières.
"And as I am about to start on the Egyptian tour that will take me away for a year, I want to know if I may take advantage of having been made one of the family and ask you to make use of my cottage at Ardsley for the honeymoon—which I hope may last until my return, if Mr. Battersby's commissions don't call him away before. I will have my people put it at your disposal."
"Dear, dear Mrs. Devereaux!" cried Marcia. If some
thing odd in the beating of her heart made her feel her further speech to be foolishly incoherent, it was, perhaps, not unattractively so to her smiling elders.
She did not hear Mr. Fosdyke's exclamation as the lights of Mrs. Devereaux's carriage disappeared from view: "Of all the Arabian Nights' entertainments! Who am I, anyway?"
She had been drawn into the dining-room with Kersley's outstretched arms closing around her firmly as she mechanically but ineffectually strove to retreat, his blue eyes beaming down on her as he whispered:
"Oh, Marcia, Marcia! This comes of trying to show gratitude to strangers. '
About to be engaged!
' Accepting a honeymoon cottage before you'd accepted the man!"
"It must have been highly interesting," observed Mrs. Archie Brawle; "so much pleasanter than a concert."
"Rather!" replied Lord Frederic. "It was ripping!"
Mrs. Ascott-Smith turned to Mr. Carteret. She had been listening to Lord Frederic Westcote, who had just come down from town where he had seen the Wild West show. "Is it so?" she asked. "Have you ever seen them?" By "them" she meant the Indians.
Mr. Carteret nodded.
"It seems so odd," continued Mrs. Archie Brawle, "that they should ride without saddles. Is it a pose?"
"No, I fancy not," replied Lord Frederic.
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