face when you emptied
your glass just now. Permit me to offer you something nice to take the
taste of the waters out of your mouth." He produced from his pocket a
beautiful little box filled with sugar-plums. "I bought it in Paris,"
h e explained. "Having lived a good deal in France, I have got into a
habit of making little presents of this sort to ladies and children. I
wouldn't let the doctor see it, miss, if I were you. He has the usual
medical prejudice against sugar-plums." With that quaint warning, he,
too, made his bow and discreetly withdrew.

Thinking it over afterward, I acknowledged to myself that the English
Captain--although he was the handsomest man of the two, and possessed
the smoothest manners--had failed, nevertheless, to overcome my shyness.
The American traveler's unaffected sincerity and good-humor, on the
other hand, set me quite at my ease. I could look at him and thank
him, and feel amused at his sympathy with the grimace I had made, after
swallowing the ill-flavored waters. And yet, while I lay awake at night,
wondering whether we should meet our new acquaintances on the next day,
it was the English Captain that I most wanted to see again, and not
the American traveler! At the time, I set this down to nothing more
important than my own perversity. Ah, dear! dear! I know better than
that now.

The next morning brought the doctor to our hotel on a special visit to
my aunt. He invented a pretext for sending me into the next room,
which was so plainly a clumsy excuse that my curiosity was aroused. I
gratified my curiosity. Must I make my confession plainer still? Must
I acknowledge that I was mean enough to listen on the other side of the
door?

I heard my dear innocent old aunt say: "Doctor! I hope you don't see
anything alarming in the state of Bertha's health."

The doctor burst out laughing. "My dear madam! there is nothing in the
state of the young lady's health which need cause the smallest anxiety
to you or to me. The object of my visit is to justify myself for
presenting those two gentlemen to you yesterday. They are both greatly
struck by Miss Bertha's beauty, and they both urgently entreated me
to introduce them. Such introductions, I need hardly say, are marked
exceptions to my general rule. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred I
should have said No. In the cases of Captain Stanwick and Mr. Varleigh,
however, I saw no reason to hesitate. Permit me to assure you that I am
not intrudi