am, I protest----"

"La! You protest! Did you not come here to see me? Answer me that, sir!"
With an angry stamp of her foot.

"Yes, Mistress Westerleigh, your note----"

"And to philander? Do you deny it?"

"Deny it. Odzooks, yes! 'Tis the last thing I have in my mind," I rapped
out mighty short. "I have done with women and their follies. I begin to
see why men of sense prefer to keep their freedom."

"Do you, Kenn? And was the other lady so hard on you? Did she make you pay
for our follies? Poor Kenn!" laughed my mocking tormentor with so sudden a
change of front that I was quite nonplussed. "And did you think I did not
know my rakehelly lover Sir Robert better than to blame you for his
quarrels?"

I breathed freer. She had taken the wind out of my sails, for I had come
purposing to give her a large piece of my mind. Divining my intention,
womanlike she had created a diversion by carrying the war into the country
of the enemy.

She looked winsome in the extreme. Little dimples ran in and out her
peach-bloom cheeks. In her eyes danced a kind of innocent devilry, and the
alluring mouth was the sweetest Cupid's bow imaginable. Laughter rippled
over her face like the wind in golden grain. Mayhap my eyes told what I
was thinking, for she asked in a pretty, audacious imitation of the Scotch
dialect Aileen was supposed to speak,

"Am I no' bonny, Kenneth?"

"You are that, 'Toinette."

"But you love her better?" she said softly.

I told her yes.

"And yet----" She turned and began to pull a honeysuckle to pieces,
pouting in the prettiest fashion conceivable.

The graceful curves of the lithe figure provoked me. There was a challenge
in her manner, and my blood beat with a surge. I made a step or two toward
her.

"And yet?" I repeated, over her shoulder.

One by one the petals floated away.

"There was a time----" She spoke so softly I had to bend over to hear.

I sighed. "A thousand years ago, 'Toinette."

"But love is eternal, and in eternity a thousand years are but as a day."

The long curving lashes were lifted for a moment, and the dancing brown
eyes flashed into mine. While mine held them they began to dim. On my soul
the little witch contrived to let the dew of tears glisten there. Now a
woman's tears are just the one thing Kenneth Montagu cannot resist. After
all I am not the first man that has come to make war and stayed to make
love.

"'Toinette! 'Toinette!" I chided, resolution melting fas