--"

Mr. Kennaston paused, with a slight air of apology.

"If I were you," he suggested, pleasantly, "I would move a
little--just a little--to the left. That will enable you to obtain to
a fuller extent the benefit of the sunbeam which is falling--quite
by accident, of course--upon your hair. You are perfectly right,
Margaret, in selecting that hedge as a background. Its sombre green
sets you off to perfection."

He went away chuckling. He felt that Margaret must think him a devil
of a fellow.

She didn't, though.

"The _idea_ of his suspecting me of such unconscionable vanity!" she
said, properly offended. Then, "Anyhow, a man has no business to know
about such things," she continued, with rising indignation. "I believe
Felix Kennaston is as good a judge of chiffons as any woman. That's
effeminate, I think, and catty and absurd. I don't believe I ever
liked him--not really, that is. Now, what would Billy care about
sunbeams and backgrounds, I'd like to know! He'd never even notice
them. Billy is a _man_. Why, that's just what father said yesterday!"
Margaret cried, and afterward laughed happily. "I suppose old people
are right sometimes--but, dear, dear, they're terribly unreasonable at
others!"

Having thus uttered the ancient, undying plaint of youth, Miss Hugonin
moved a matter of two inches to the left, and smiled, and waited
contentedly. It was barely possible some one might come that way; and
it is always a comfort to know that one is not exactly repulsive in
appearance.

Also, there was the spring about her; and, chief of all, there was a
queer fluttering in her heart that was yet not unpleasant. In fine,
she was unreasonably happy for no reason at all.

I believe the foolish poets call this feeling love and swear it
is divine; however, they will say anything for the sake of an
ear-tickling jingle. And while it is true that scientists have any
number of plausible and interesting explanations for this same
feeling, I am sorry to say I have forgotten them.

I am compelled, then, to fall back upon those same unreliable,
irresponsible rhymesters, and to insist with them that a maid waiting
in the springtide for the man she loves is necessarily happy and very
rarely puzzles her head over the scientific reason for it.

XXI

But ten minutes later she saw Mr. Woods in the distance striding
across the sunlit terraces, and was seized with a conviction that
their interview was likely to prove a stormy o