ate. Only everybody gave way to her. That was her
father's fault. He never would have her thwarted. But she's turned out
very well, hasn't she? So I can't blame him. I know your mother thought
us rather lax."

"Ah, my mother was not lax."

"It only shows there's room for both ways, doesn't it? What was I
saying?"

I knew what she had been saying, but not which part of it she desired to
repeat. However she found it for herself in a moment.

"Oh, yes! No, she never changes. Just what she is to you now she'll be
all her life. I never knew her to change. She just loves you or she
doesn't, and there it rests. You may feel quite safe."

"How very satisfactory all this is, Cousin Elizabeth!"

"Satisfactory?" she exclaimed, with a momentary surprise at my epithet.
But her theory came to the rescue. "Oh, I know you always talk like
that. Well, I don't expect you to talk like a lover to me. It's quite
enough if you do it to Elsa. Yes, it is--satisfactory, isn't it?" The
good creature laughed heartily and squeezed my hand. "She'll never
change," she repeated once again in an ample, comfortable contentment.
"And you don't mind showing what you feel, do you?"

Cousin Elizabeth was chaffing me.

"On my word, I forgot how public we were," said I. "My feelings ran away
with me."

"Oh, why should you be ashamed? They might laugh, but I'm sure they
envied you."

It was strange enough, but it is very likely that they did. For my own
part, I have learned not to envy people without knowing a good deal
about them and their affairs.

"Because," pursued Cousin Elizabeth, "I have always in my heart hated
merely arranged marriages. They're not right, you know, Augustin. They
may be necessary, but they're not right."

"Very necessary, but quite wrong," I agreed.

"And at one time I was the least bit afraid--However I was a silly old
woman. Do look at her talking to your mother. Oh, of course, you were
looking at her already. You weren't listening to my chatter."

But I had listened to Cousin Elizabeth's chatter. She had told me
something of interest. Elsa would never change; she took a view and a
relation toward a person and maintained them. What she was to me now she
would be always.

"My dear cousin, I have listened with keen interest to every word that
you've said," I protested truthfully.

"That's your politeness. I know what lovers are," said Cousin Elizabeth.

I looked across to the Duke's passive tired face. The thoug