y dark."

"I don't wonder at her," said Lady Claire unforgivingly. "I'm sure
he must have been horrid to her!"

"I rather think she was horrid to him," Billy reflected, "although
she was a very sprightly looking lady love. He showed me her picture
in the back of his watch.... By _George_!" he uttered violently.

"What is it?"

"Oh--an idea, that's all. Something I must really attend to before
I--this afternoon, I mean. But there's no hurry about it," he added
cheerily.

Oh, Billy, Billy! Not even with his blood hot with thoughts of the
evening's work, not even with his memory ridden with Arlee's gay
witchery, could he keep his restless young eyes from laughing down
at her. But there wasn't a notion in the back of his honest head as
to the picture he was making in Lady Claire's eyes as he leaned,
long-limbed, broad-shouldered, lazily at ease against the desk, his
gray eyes very bright between their dark lashes, his dark hair
sweeping back from his wide forehead.

"Are you sure?" she asked of him, with the smile that he drew from
her. "Is it the inspiration for another picture?"

"No, no--that was my first and my last. That was the one purple
bloom of my art. I have laid my brushes by.... But I'm keeping you
from that letter you were going to write."

"It's just a few lines for Miss Falconer," Lady Claire unnecessarily
explained. "We are going to drive out to the Gezireh Palace Hotel
for tea, and she thought her brother might like to go out with us if
he came in in time."

She did not add why Miss Falconer was unable to write her own notes,
but slanted her blue-hatted head over the desk and then hastily
blotted her brief lines and tucked the sheet into an envelope.
Hesitantly she looked up at Billy.

"Have you been out to the Gezireh Palace?" she very innocently
inquired.

"Alone," said Billy.

"It's very jolly there," said she. "It's so gay--and the music is
_quite_ good."

"H'm," meditated Billy. "The condemned man ate a hearty tea of
Orange Pekoe and cress sandwiches," he reflected silently. He also
reflected that Miss Falconer would be furious--and that invited
him--and that time was interminable and that this expedition was as
good a way of getting through the afternoon as any other. Thereupon
he turned to the English girl, with a humorous challenge in his
gaze. "I wonder if you and Miss Falconer would let this be my tea
party?" he suggested.

"Miss Falconer will be delighted," said Lady Claire m