meant it--and I told him to go and ask
his Papa: and now I'm going to ask my Poppa and Mammy if I may be Lady
Leighton soon, and, perhaps, some day Countess of Kyneston. You see,
Lord Leighton is just a viscount now----"

"What, just a viscount!" exclaimed Mrs van Huysman, getting up from her
chair and putting a plump arm round her neck. "Just a viscount--and heir
to one of the oldest peerages in England! Oh, Brenda, is it really
true?"

"I guess Brenda wouldn't say it if it wasn't, and that's about all there
is to it," said her father, putting his long arm out over the table. "I
congratulate you, my girl. Mammy and I may have been a bit troubled over
some of those other refusals of yours, but you seem to have known best,
after all: and I reckon your Uncle Ephraim'll think the same. Lord
Leighton's a man right through. He wouldn't have done what he has done
if he hadn't been. Shake, child, and----"

Brenda "shook," and then, without another word, she got up and hurried
out of the room.

"The girl's right!" said Professor van Huysman, as the door closed
behind her; "and if I'm not a fool entirely, she's found the right man."

"Hoskins, you can leave that to a well-brought-up girl like Brenda all
the time. She _is_ right, and all we've got to hope for now is that the
Earl will be right too," said his wife somewhat anxiously.

"He's just got to see our girl and then he will be, unless he's a
natural born idiot, which, of course, he couldn't be," replied Brenda's
father in a tone of absolute conviction. "Now, I wonder what that man
Marmion's going to let loose on us to-morrow night?"

"Good morning, sir," said Lord Leighton, as his father came into the
breakfast-room at about the same time that Brenda left the other room in
the Savoy.

"Good morning, Lester," replied the Earl of Kyneston, as father and son
shook hands in the old courtly fashion which, within the last half
century, has gone out of vogue save among those who have ancestors whose
record is a credit to their descendants. "You are looking very well and
fit--and there is something else. What is it? Had you a very pleasant
evening yesterday at 'The Wilderness'? Has Miss Marmion revoked her
decision after all?"

"No, sir," said his son, looking at him with brightening eyes; "but she
convinced me that I had thought myself in love with the wrong girl--and
the other girl was on the lawn at the same time, talking with the man
that Miss Marmion was, and is in