tage if you aren't
careful. I'd keep my sleeves down if I were you----"

"'And that's _that_!'" the Boy-Impersonator wound up with George Robey's
tag. And in the midst of all the laughter and chatter no one seemed to
notice that two of the party were absolutely silent and almost too
absent-minded to drink their tea--namely, the American cousin and Miss
Nellie Million, the heiress.

I hardly dared to look at her. I thought I was in for a terrible flood
of tears and misery as soon as we got home to the "Refuge."

For evidently Mr. Hiram P. Jessop had been getting in quite a long talk
with his cousin before tea, and I am sure he had explained to her just
the sort of gay deceiver that her admired and Honourable Jim was!

Oh, the disillusionment of that!

To find out that he had made that dead set at knowing her from the
beginning only because of her uncle's money! And that, so far from there
having been any of that family friendship of which she was so proud, he
had never set eyes on old Mr. Million!

I was afraid she would be utterly heart-broken, shaken with sobs over
the perfidy of that handsome impostor whom she must always love....

How little I knew her kind!

I was undeceived on the way home to the "Refuge." Miss Million clutched
me by the arm, holding me back until every other member of the party,
those who walked, those who rode on donkeys, and those who motored, had
got well ahead.

"I'm walking back alone with you, Smith," she announced firmly. "Let all
of them get on, Hiram and Vi and all. I want to speak to you. I'm fair
bursting to have a talk about all this."

I pressed the sturdy short arm in my own with as much sympathy as I
could show.

"My dear! My dear Miss Million," I murmured, "I am so dreadfully sorry
about it all----"

"Sorry? How d'you mean sorry, Smith?" My unexpected little mistress
turned sharply upon me. "Y'orter to be glad, I should think!"

"Glad?"

"Yes! About me being 'put wise,' as Hiram calls it, to something that I
might have been going on and on getting taken in about," went on Miss
Million as we started off to find the road over the downs.

"If it hadn't ha' bin for my cousin and him meeting face to face, and
him not able to deny what he'd said, I might ha' been to the end of the
chapter believing every word I was told by that Mr. Burke. Did you ever
know anything like him and the lies he's been stuffing me up with?"

I stared at the real and righteous and dry-eyed a