t when
she did discover that such was the fact she blushed all over, and looked
up at Ralph Gowan in some naive distress.

"I did n't know any one was coming," she said, "and I was so comfortable
that I fell asleep. It was the cushions, I think."

"I dare say it was," answered Gowan, regarding her sleep-flushed cheeks
and exquisite eyes with the pleasure he always felt in any beauty,
animate or inanimate. "May I sit here, Mollie?" and then he looked at
her again and decided that he was quite right in speaking to her as he
would have spoken to a child, because she _was_ such a very child.

"By me, on the sofa?" she answered. "Oh, yes."

"Are you going to talk business with Phil?" she asked him next, "or may
I stay here? Griffith and Dolly won't want me in the parlor, and I don't
want to go into the kitchen."

"I have no doubt you may stay here," he said, quite seriously; "but why
won't they want you in the parlor?"

"They never want anybody," astutely. "I dare say they are making
love,--they generally are."

"Making love," he repeated. "Ah, indeed!" and for the next few minutes
was so absorbed in thought that Mollie was quite forgotten.

Making love were they,--this shabby, rather un-amiable young man and the
elder Miss Crewe? It sounded rather like nonsense to Ralph Gowan, but
it was not a pleasant sort of thing to think about. It is not to be
supposed that he himself was very desperately in love with Dolly just
yet, but it must be admitted he admired her decidedly. Beauty as Mollie
was, he scarcely gave her a glance when Dolly was in the room,--he
recognized the beauty, but it did not enslave him, it did not even
attract him as Dolly's imperfect charms did. And perhaps he had his own
ideas of what Dolly's love-making would be, of the spice and variety
which would form its characteristics, and of the little bursts of warmth
and affection that would render it delightful. It was not soothing
to think of all this being lavished on a shabby young man who was
not always urbane in demeanor and who stubbornly objected to being
propitiated by politeness.

As was very natural, Mr. Ralph Gowan did not admire Mr. Griffith
Donne enthusiastically. In his visits to Bloomsbury Place, finding
an ill-dressed young man whose position in the household he could not
understand, he began by treating him with good-natured suavity, being
ready enough to make friends with him, as he had made friends with the
rest of Phil's compatriot