little--the short note he had received from
his friend Penrhyn Cardemon, saying rather brusquely that he'd made up
his mind not to have his portrait painted for five thousand dollars, and
that he was going off on _The Mohave_ to be gone a year at least.

Which pained Querida, because Cardemon had not only side-stepped what
was almost a commission, but he had, also, apparently forgotten his
invitation to spend the summer on _The Mohave_--with the understanding
that Valerie West was also to be invited.

However, everything comes in its season; and this did not appear to be
the season for ripe commissions and yachting enterprises; but it
certainly seemed to be the season for a judicious matrimonial
enterprise.

And when Mrs. Hind-Willet received him in a rose-tinted reception
corner, audaciously intimate and secluded, he truly felt that he was
really missing something of the pleasures of the chase, and that it was
a little too easy to be acutely enjoyable.

However, when at last he had gently retained her hand and had whispered,
"Alma," and had let his big, dark, velvet eyes rest with respectful
passion upon her smaller and clearer and blacker ones, something
somewhere in the machinery seemed to go wrong--annoyingly wrong.

Because Mrs. Hind-Willet began to laugh--and evidently was trying not
to--trying to remain very serious; but her little black eyes were
glistening with tears of suppressed mirth, and when, amazed and
offended, he would have withdrawn his hand, she retained it almost
convulsively:

"Jose! I _beg_ your pardon!--I truly do. It is perfectly horrid and
unspeakable of me to behave this way; but listen, child! I am forty; I
am perfectly contented not to marry again; _and_ I don't love you. So,
my poor Jose, what on earth am I to do if I don't laugh a little. I
_can't_ weep over it you know."

The scarlet flush faded from his olive skin. "Alma," he began
mournfully, but she only shook her head, vigorously.

"Nonsense," she said. "You like me for a sufficient variety of reasons.
And to tell you the truth I suspect that I am quite as madly in love
with you as you actually are with me. No, no, Jose. There are too
many--discrepancies--of various kinds. I have too little to gain!--to be
horribly frank--and you--alas!--are a very cautious, very clever, and
admirably sophisticated young man.... There, there! I am not really
accusing you--or blaming you--very much.... I'd have tried the same
thing in your pl