bliss from her? She knows the honour
proffered me, and has promised to keep the secret."

"Until the gentleman had received a positive and final acceptance, I
should imagine such confidence premature."

Mrs. Palma spoke sternly, and withdrew her fingers from her
daughter's clasp.

"As if there were even a ghost of a doubt as to the final acceptance!
As if I dared play this heavy fish an instant, with such a frail
line? Ah, mamma! don't tease me by such tactics! I am but an
insignificant mouse, and you and Mr. Congreve are such a grim pair of
cats, that I should never venture the faintest squeak. Don't roll me
under your velvet paws, and pat me playfully, trying to arouse false
hopes of escape, when all the while you are resolved to devour me
presently. Don't! I am a wiry mouse, proud and sensitive, and some
mice, it is said, will not permit insult added to injury."

"Regina, are you ready? I shall take you to Mrs. Brompton's, and it
is quite time to start."

Mrs. Palma looked impatiently at Regina, and as the latter rose to
get her hat and wrappings from her own room, she saw the mother lean
over the pillows, saw also that the white arms of the girl were
quickly thrown up around her neck.

Soon after, she heard the front door-bell ring, and when she started
down the steps, Olga called from her room:

"Come in. Mamma has to answer a note before she leaves home. When you
go down, please ask Terry to give a half-bottle of that white wine
with the bronze seal to Octave, and tell him to make and send up to
me as soon as possible a wine-chocolate. Mrs. Tarrant's long-promised
grand affair comes off to-night, and I must build myself up for the
occasion."

"Are you feverish, Olga? Your cheeks are such a brilliant scarlet?"

"Only the fever of delicious excitement, which all young ladies of my
sentimental temperament are expected to indulge, when assured that
the perilous voyage of portionless maidenhood is blissfully ended in
the comfortable harbour of affluent matrimony. Does that feel like
ordinary fever?"

She put out her large well-formed hand, and, clasping it between her
own, Regina exclaimed:

"How very cold! You are ill, or worse still, you are unhappy. Your
heart is not in this marriage."

"My heart? It is only an automatic contrivance for propelling the
blood through my system, and so long as it keeps me in becoming
colour, I have no right to complain. The theory of hearts entering
into connubial cont