leeve,
and said in the intervals of effort: "Well, you know _my_ name. Molly
didn't forget that."

"But _I_ did," Sylvia confessed. "I was so excited by the fire I never
noticed at all. I've been racking my brains to remember, all the way
up here."

For some reason the man seemed quite struck with this statement and
eyed her with keenness as he said: "Oh--really? Well, my name is
Austin Page." At the candid blankness of her face he showed a boyish
flash of white teeth in a tanned face. "Do you mean to say you've
never heard of me?"

"_Should_ I?" said Sylvia, with a graceful pretense of alarm. "Do you
write, or something? Lay it to my ignorance. It's immense."

He shook his head. He smiled down on her. She noticed now that his
eyes were very kind as well as clear and keen. "No, I don't write, or
anything. There's no reason why you should ever have heard of me. I
only thought--I thought possibly Molly or Uncle George might have
happened to mention me."

"I'm only on from the West for a visit," explained Sylvia. "I never
was in Lydford before. I don't know the people there."

"Well then, to avoid Morrison's strictures on introductions I'll add
to my name the information that I am thirty-two years old; a graduate
of Columbia University; that I have some property in Colorado which
gives me a great deal of trouble; and a farm with a wood lot in
Vermont which is the joy of my heart. I cannot endure politics; I
play the flute, like my eggs boiled three minutes, and admire George
Meredith."

His manoeuvers with his sleeve were so preposterous that Sylvia now
cried to him: "Oh, don't twist around that way. You'll give yourself
a crick in the neck. Here's my handkerchief. We were going to share
that, anyhow."

"And you," he went on gravely, wiping his face with the bit of
cambric, "are Sylvia Marshall, presumably Miss; you can laugh at a
joke on yourself; are not afraid to wash your face with kitchen soap;
and apparently are the only girl in the twentieth century who has not
a mirror and a powder-puff concealed about her person."

All approbation was sweet to Sylvia. She basked in this. "Oh, I'm
a Hottentot, a savage from the West, as I told you," she said
complacently.

"You've been in Lydford long enough to hear Morrison hold forth on the
idiocies of social convention, the while he neatly manipulates them to
his own advantage."

Sylvia had dreaded having to speak of Morrison, but she was now
greatly encouraged