o."

"How will a week help you, my dear? Ever so many weeks have passed, and
you are still uncertain."

"I am sure that a week will make all the difference. I think I shall
have decided then. I am in earnest, dear papa," she added, gravely. "Do
you think I would willingly do anything to hurt Paul?"

"No, my dear, I don't," answered John Carvel. "Only--you might do it
unwillingly, you know, and as far as he is concerned it would come to
very much the same thing." And with this word of warning the interview
ended.

When I went home to dinner, I found Gregorios Balsamides seated on the
wooden bench under the honeysuckle outside my door. He had escaped from
the dust and heat of Pera, and had come to spend the night, sure of
finding a hearty welcome at my kiosk on the hill. I sat down beside him,
and he began asking me questions about the people who had arrived,
giving me in return the news and gossip of Pera.

"You have a very pretty place here," he said. "A man I knew took it last
summer, and used to give tea-parties and little fetes in the evening. It
is easy to string lanterns from one tree to another, and it makes a very
pretty effect. It is a mild form of idiocy, it is true,--much milder
than the prevailing practice of dancing in-doors, with the thermometer
at the boiling point."

"It is not a bad idea," I answered. "We will experiment upon our friends
the Carvels in a small way. I will ask them and the Patoffs to come here
next Saturday. Can you come, too?"

The thing was settled, and Gregorios promised to be of the party. We
dined, and sat late together, talking long before we went to bed.
Gregorios is a soldier, and does not mind roughing it a little; so he
slept on the divan, and declared the next day that he had slept very
well.

XXIII.

Madame Patoff had not received the news of Alexander's accident with
indifference, and it had been necessary that he should assure her
himself that he was not seriously hurt before she could be quieted. He
had been badly stunned, however, and his head gave him much pain during
several days, as was natural enough. He spent most of his time on the
sofa in his mother's sitting-room, and she would sit for hours talking
to him and trying to soothe his pain. The sympathy between the two
seemed strengthened, and it was strange to see how, when together, their
manner changed. The relation between the mother and the spoiled child is
a very peculiar one, and occupies an