hey will believe I did kiss you-."

"Oh!" gasped Tony, indignant but lingering, recognizing the probable
truth of his prediction.

"We shall go together after a minute with sedateness, as if we had been
studying the stars. I am wise, my Tony. Trust me."

"Very well," assented Tony. "How many stars are there in the Pleiades,
anyway?" she asked with sudden imps of mirth in her eyes.

Again she felt on safe ground, sure that she had conquered and put a
too presuming male in his place. She had no idea that the laurels had
been chiefly not hers at all but Alan Massey's, who was quite as wise
as he boasted.

But she kept her word and danced no more with Alan Massey that night.
She did not dare. She hated Alan Massey, disapproved of him heartily and
knew it would be the easiest thing in the world to fall in love with
him, especially if she let herself dance often with him as they had
danced to-night.

And so, her very first night at Crest House, Antoinette Holiday
discovered that, there was such a thing as love after all, and that it
had to be reckoned with whether you desired or not to welcome it at
your door.

CHAPTER XI

THINGS THAT WERE NOT ALL ON THE CARD

After that first night in the garden Alan Massey did not try to make open
love to Tony again, but his eyes, following her wherever she moved, made
no secret of his adoration. He was nearly always by her side, driving off
other devotees when he chose with a cool high-handedness which sometimes
amused, sometimes infuriated Tony. She found the man a baffling and
fascinating combination of qualities, all petty selfishness and colossal
egotisms one minute, abounding in endless charms and graces and small
endearing chivalries the next; outrageously outspoken at times, at other
times, reticent to the point of secretiveness; now reaching the most
extravagant pitch of high spirits, and then, almost without warning,
submerged in moods of Stygian gloom from which nothing could rouse him.

Tony came to know something of his romantic and rather mottled career
from Carlotta and others, even from Alan himself. She knew perfectly well
he was not the kind of man Larry or her uncle would approve or tolerate.
She disapproved of him rather heartily herself in many ways. At times she
disliked him passionately, made up her mind she would have no more to do
with him. At other times she was all but in love with him, and suspected
she would have found the world an intolerabl