ion.

"All I care for now is to get the singing lessons, as long as I don't
have to do anything too bad to get them."

I suddenly turned on her and asked--

"Honestly, why did you throw that dish of water on Ernest Breslaw?"
Thus unexpectedly attacked, her answer slipped out before she had time
to prevaricate.

"Because I was a mad-headed silly fool--the biggest idiot that ever
walked. That's why I did it!"

"Do you know that it hurt him very, very keenly?"

No answer.

"Do you know that he cared more for you than he understood himself?"

No answer.

"Dawn, do _you_ care?"

"Not in that way; but oh, I care terribly that I made such a fool of
myself. Had it been any one else it wouldn't have mattered, but he
will think I did it because I was an ignorant commoner who knew no
better. That's what stings; but I'm not going to think any more of it.
I'm going to give my life up to singing, and it doesn't matter. I
suppose I'll never see him again, and he'll never know but that I did
it out of ignorance."

I smiled at the despondence in her tone as I extinguished the kerosene
lamp-light.

There is a stage in the course of most love affairs when the knight is
despised and rejected by the lady, when the sun and the salt of life
depart, and he finds no more pleasure in it; when he is seized with an
irresistible desire to go forth in the world and by his prowess dazzle
all mankind for the purpose of attracting one pair of eyes. The same
occurs to the lady, and she determines to make all men fall at her
feet by way of illustrating to one adamantine heart that he was a
dullard to have passed over her charms. And this young lady of the
rose and lily complexion, and knight of the bright-hued locks and
herculean muscles, being young--sufficiently young to be downcast by
imaginary stumbling-blocks--had reached it. Goosey-gander knight!
Gander-goosey lady!

I smiled again, for in my pocket was a letter that morning received
from the former himself, stating that he had been booked for a trip to
the St Louis Exposition, but had flung it up at the last moment in
favour of seeing how Les. got on at the election, and that he would be
back in Noonoon before polling-day. Considering he could have seen how
the election progressed equally as well in Sydney as Noonoon, and that
to see how his step-brother polled, when he took little interest in
politics, had grown preferable to a trip to America, quite contented
me regarding the