en yours. Tell me, dear: will you try for Judy
now?"

"As our American friends say: 'Not on your life,'" laughed Philippe.
"Molly has taught me a lesson. I am not in love with Miss Julia Kean
even as much as with my cousin, and with the example of happiness ever
before my eyes that you and my father present, I shall be very careful
and pick out for my wife one whom I truly love and who, I hope, truly
loves me. I can't quite see how I escaped falling deeply in love with
Cousin Molly. She is so sweet and so everything that I admire. Do you
know, _ma mere_, I have an idea that the Providence that looks after
children and fools has protected me from a calamity which falling in
love with Molly would have been? I have a feeling that my little cousin
is already in love with someone else, and that there never has been a
chance for me."

"Well, what a wise young man a refusal has made of you!" teased his
mother. "Two or three more experiences of the sort will make a real
savant of you. What makes you have this feeling, this pricking in your
thumbs?"

"Something about the way she spoke of love. Her eyes are certainly the
mirrors of her soul, and there was a look in them that made me feel she
knew what she was talking about."

"Well, we never can tell. I am glad my thoughtlessness and stupidity
have not done any damage," said the marchioness, looking fondly at her
handsome son and thinking in her heart that both girls must be either
blind or already very much in love not to be crazy about her Adonis.

That night, the soft white clouds that had been the despair of Judy and
Pierce all day as they had vainly tried to put them on canvas, came
together and managed to make a very large black cloud which finally
filled the whole heavens; and a fierce thunder storm ensued.

Molly and Judy lay awake talking. Judy had the hardihood to accuse Molly
of having turned down a chance to become the future Marquise d'Ochte.

"How on earth do you know, Judy? I would never think of telling such a
thing even to you, my very best friend. It seems a very unfair advantage
to take of a man, to let people know he has been refused. But you are
the greatest guesser in the world."

"It didn't take much guessing to come to this conclusion. Who's a mole
now, you old bat? I have known for some time that the handsome Philippe
has had us both under consideration and it was a toss up which one would
be honored. I was betting on you but hoping I would draw