somehow, the deference seemed to please her. So he felt that the
tension was lessened as she turned over the blue-prints. Moreover, in
matters of architecture he felt at home--if he could only steer clear
of any discussion of the grounds. He had no idea of the location of
these.

Soon their heads were close together over the plans. A dozen times her
hair brushed his lips, two or three times his fingers touched the satin
skin of her arms and shoulders, and all the time he felt himself within
the magic atmosphere which enwraps so divine a maiden, as odorous
breezes clothe the shores of Ceylon. Her breath, the faint sweet
perfume in her hair, the soft frou-frou of her skirts, the appealing
lowness of her voice--all these wrought strongly on Florian; and when
she leaned lightly upon him as she reached past him for one of the
sheets, he felt (I record it to his credit) as if he must take her to
his arms, and complete the embrace she had involuntarily half begun.
But the feeling that she was, after all, a strange young girl, and was
revealing herself to him altogether under a mistake as to his identity,
restrained him.

[Illustration: Soon their heads were close together over the plans]

She did not lean against him any more. There were some little
improvements in the plans which had occurred to Elizabeth, especially
in the arrangement of kitchen, pantry and laundry.

"I'll have the architect come and see you about these," said Amidon.

"What!" said she, in apparent astonishment--"from Boston?"

"Ah--well," he stammered, "I didn't know--that is---- Yes, from
Boston! We want these matters as you want them, you know, if it were
from Paris or Calcutta. And I think there should be some provision for
prism-glass to light up the library. It could be cut in right there on
that north exposure; don't you think so?"

"Oh, yes, and what an improvement it will be!" she replied. "And may I
have all the editions of Browning I want, even if I couldn't explain
what _Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came_ means?"

"Oh, does that point puzzle you?" exclaimed Florian, greeting the
allusion to Browning as the war-horse welcomes the battle. "Then you
have never chanced to run across the first edition of Child's _Scottish
Ballads_. You get the story there, of Childe Roland following up the
quest for his sister, shut up by enchantment in the Dark Tower, in
searching for which his brothers--Cuthbert and Giles, you remember, and