ll me something else--anything--just to see how we
like it. Tell me, do you know my first name?"

"Elsin," I said softly, and to my astonishment a faint, burning
sensation stung my cheeks, growing warmer and warmer. I think she was
astonished, too, for few men at twenty-three could color up in those
days; and there was I, a hardened New Yorker of four years' adoption,
turning pink like a great gaby at a country fair when his sweetheart
meets him at the ginger bower!

To cover my chagrin I nodded coolly, repeating her name with a critical
air--"Elsin," I mused, outwardly foppish, inwardly amazed and
mad--"Elsin--um! ah!--very pretty--very unusual," I added, with a
patronizing nod.

She did not resent it; when at last I made bold to meet her gaze it was
pensive and serene, yet I felt somehow that her innocent blue eyes had
taken my measure as a man--and not to my advantage.

"Your name is not a usual one," she said. "When I first heard it from
Sir Peter I laughed."

"Why?" I said coldly.

"Why? Oh, I don't know, Mr. Renault! It sounded so very young--Carus
Renault--it sounds so young and guileless----"

Speechless with indignation, I caught a glimmer under the lowered lids
that mocked me, and I saw her mouth quiver with the laugh fluttering
for freedom.

She looked up, all malice, and the pent laughter rippled.

"Very well," I said, giving in, "I shall take no pity on you in
future."

"My dear Mr. Renault, do you think I require your pity?"

"Not now," I said, chagrined. "But one day you may cry out for
mercy----"

"Which you will doubtless accord, being a gallant gentleman and no
Mohawk."

"Oh, I can be a barbarian, too, for I am, by adoption, an Oneida of the
Wolf Clan, and entitled to a seat in Council."

"I see," she said, "you wear your hair a l'Iroquois."

I reddened again; I could not help it, knowing my hair was guiltless of
powder and all awry.

"If I had supposed you were here, do you imagine I should have
presented myself unpowdered and without a waistcoat?" I said,
exasperated.

Her laughter made it no easier, though I strove to retrieve myself and
return to the light badinage she had routed me from. Lord, what a tease
was in this child, with her deep blue eyes and her Dresden porcelain
skin of snow and roses!

"Now," she said, recovering her gravity, "you may return to your
letter-writing, Mr. Renault. I have done with you for the moment."

At that I was sobered in a trice.

"What