eg your pardon?' he said.

'You heard quite correctly,' she smiled. 'The reply is in the negative.'

She resisted a mad, but inconvenient, temptation to dance a breakdown on
the floor of the hansom.

'You're joking,' said Dick calmly. 'You're certainly joking.'

'I will be a sister to you.'

Dick reflected for a moment, and he rubbed his chin.

'The chance will never recur, you know,' he remarked.

'I will bear the threat that is implied in that with fortitude.'

He turned round and taking her hand, raised it to his lips.

'I thank you from the bottom of my heart,' he said earnestly.

This puzzled her.

'The man's mad,' she murmured to a constable who stood on the curb as
they passed. 'The man's nothing short of a raving lunatic.'

'It is one of my most cherished convictions that a really nice woman is
never so cruel as to marry a man she cares for. You have given me proof
of esteem which I promise I will never forget.'

Mrs. Crowley could not help laughing.

'You're much too flippant to marry anybody, and you're perfectly odious
into the bargain.'

'I will be a brother to you, Mrs. Crowley.'

He opened the trap and told the cabman to drive back to Victoria Street,
but at Hyde Park Corner he suggested that Mrs. Crowley might drop him so
that he could take a stroll in the park. When he got out and closed the
doors behind him, Julia leaned forward.

'Would you like some letters of introduction before you go?' she said.

'What for?'

'It is evident that unless your soul is dead to all the finer feelings,
you will seek to assuage your sorrow by shooting grizzlies in the Rocky
Mountains. I thought a few letters to my friends in New York might be
useful to you.'

'I'm sure that's very considerate of you, but I fancy it's scarcely the
proper season. I was thinking of a week in Paris.'

'Then pray send me a dozen pairs of black suede gloves,' she retorted
coolly. 'Sixes.'

'Is that your last word?' he asked lightly.

'Yes, why?'

'I thought you might mean six and a half.'

He lifted his hat and was gone.

XIX

A few days later, Lady Kelsey and Lucy having gone on the river, Julia
Crowley went to Court Leys. When she came down to breakfast the day
after her arrival, she found waiting for her six pairs of long suede
gloves. She examined their size and their quality, smiled with
amusement, and felt a little annoyed. She really had every intention of
accepting Dick when he proposed to her,