ew, had imparted the knowledge to Von Rosen as they had walked down
the pergola, that she would immediately fall asleep.

"Aunt Harriet always goes to sleep in her chair after a cup of tea,"
Annie had said and had then blushed redly.

"Does she?" asked Von Rosen with apparent absent-mindedness but in
reality, keenly. He excused himself for a moment, left Annie standing
in the pergola and hurried back to the house, where he interviewed
Jane Riggs, and told her not to make any noise, as Miss Eustace in
the library would probably fall asleep, as was her wont after a cup
of tea. Jane Riggs assented, but she looked after him with a long,
slow look. Then she nodded her head stiffly and went on washing cups
and saucers quietly. She spoke only one short sentence to herself.
"He's a man and it's got to be somebody. Better be her than anybody
else."

When the two at the end of the pergola began talking, it was
strangely enough about the affair of the Syrian girl.

"I suppose, have always supposed, that the poor young thing's husband
came and stole his little son," said Von Rosen.

"You would have adopted him?" asked Annie in a shy voice.

"I think I would not have known any other course to take," replied
Von Rosen.

"It was very good of you," Annie said. She cast a little glance of
admiration at him.

Von Rosen laughed. "It is not goodness which counts to one's credit
when one is simply chucked into it by Providence," he returned.

Annie laughed. "To think of your speaking of Providence as
'chucking.'"

"It is rather awful," admitted Von Rosen, "but somehow I never do
feel as if I need be quite as straight-laced with you."

"Mr. von Rosen, you have talked with me exactly twice, and I am at a
loss as to whether I should consider that remark of yours as a
compliment or not."

"I meant it for one," said Von Rosen earnestly. "I should not have
used that expression. What I meant was I felt that I could be myself
with you, and not weigh words or split hairs. A clergyman has to do a
lot of that, you know, Miss Eustace, and sometimes (perhaps all the
time) he hates it; it makes him feel like a hypocrite."

"Then it is all right," said Annie rather vaguely. She gazed up at
the weave of leaves and blossoms, then down at the wavering carpet of
their shadows.

"It is lovely here," she said.

The young man looked at the slender young creature in the blue gown
and smiled with utter content.

"It is very odd," he said, "bu