l force
penetrated Mr. Heatherbloom's consciousness.

"Not going--isn't--What are you talking about?" The young man's wavering
attention focused itself on her now with swift completeness. He had
hardly heard her, until a few moments before, when her conversation had
first drifted to that ever fascinating feminine topic of foreign lords
and American heiresses, then narrowed down, much to his inward
disapproval, to one particular titled individual and one particular
heiress "But you are mistaken, of course!" he said bruskly.

"Oh, am I?" she retorted. "I suppose you believe everything you read in
the newspapers?"

Mr. Heatherbloom did not answer now; he was staring out of the window.
Against the sky the jutting lines of buildings seemed to waver; new
extraordinary angles and jogs seemed to assert themselves. His gaze had
a glittering brightness when it turned. "Have you any better authority?"

His tone was a challenge. "I heard her tell him so myself," she said
succinctly. "That she could never marry him and that he must never come
back."

Mr. Heatherbloom's hand crumpled the newspaper; then mechanically he
folded it and put it in his pocket. His look was once more bent outward;
tiny specks, that were big steamboats going very fast, seemed motionless
on the sparkling surface of the water afar. His thoughts scattered; he
tried to collect them, to realize where he was, how he happened to be
there; the identity of the speaker and what she had been saying! Certain
preconceived, fixed ideas and conclusions had been toppled over,
brushed aside in an instant. Was it possible?

"I was waiting to trim and fill the lamps," said Jane. (Miss Van Rolsen
clung to oil lamps for reading.) "The prince and she were in the
library. He has a loud voice, you know."

The young man did. "But why--"

"Search me!" Vivaciously. "He was the very pick of the whole cargo of
dukes and the like. There isn't another girl in New York would have done
it."

"But surely," scarcely hearing her last words, "no newspaper would dare
to announce such a thing without--"

"Oh, wouldn't it? When it called up the house every day, almost, and
got: 'There is nothing to say'? Didn't I answer the 'phone once or twice
myself? 'Miss Van Rolsen declines to be interviewed concerning her
niece. She has nothing to say.' I think I once giggled, the man's voice
at the other end was so aggressive. He said he was the city editor
himself. Is that very high up?"

Mr.