u would think it still better were I
to tell you what part of his person she was looking at while he said
it.

He held out his hand generously (there was no noble act he could not
have performed for her just now), but, whatever her Ladyship wanted,
it was not to say good-bye. "Do you mean that you never cared for me?"
she asked, with the tremor that always made Tommy kind.

"Never cared for you!" he exclaimed fervently. "What were you not to
me in those golden days!" It was really a magnanimous cry, meant to
help her self-respect, nothing more; but it alarmed the good in him,
and he said sternly: "But of course that is all over now. It is only a
sweet memory," he added, to make these two remarks mix.

The sentiment of this was so agreeable to him that he was half
thinking of raising her hand chivalrously to his lips when Lady
Pippinworth said:

"But if it is all over now, why have you still to walk me off?"

"Have you never had to walk me off?" said Tommy, forgetting himself,
and, to his surprise, she answered, "Yes."

"But this meeting has cured me," she said, with dangerous
graciousness.

"Dear Lady Pippinworth," replied Tommy, ardently, thinking that his
generosity had touched her, "if anything I have said----"

"It is not so much what you have said," she answered, and again she
looked at the wrong part of him.

He gave way in the waist, and then drew himself up. "If so little a
thing as that helps you----" he began haughtily.

"Little!" she cried reproachfully.

He tried to go away. He turned. "There was a time," he thundered.

"It is over," said she.

"When you were at my feet," said Tommy.

"It is over," she said.

"It could come again!"

She laughed a contemptuous No.

"Yes!" Tommy cried.

"Too stout," said she, with a drawl.

He went closer to her. She stood waiting disdainfully, and his arms
fell.

"Too stout," she repeated.

"Let us put it in that way, since it pleases you," said Tommy,
heavily. "I am too stout." He could not help adding, "And be thankful,
Lady Pippinworth, let us both be thankful, that there is some reason
to prevent my trying."

She bowed mockingly as he raised his hat. "I wish you well," he said,
"and these are my last words to you"; and he retired, not without
distinction. He retired, shall we say, as conscious of his waist as if
it were some poor soldier he was supporting from a stricken field. He
said many things to himself on the way home, and he was many