you? I should have thought it was 'd--ning' you!
Enough! When are you coming to see us? I've read that book. The man
seems to think love is nothing but passion, and passion always fatal. I
wonder! Perhaps you know.

"Don't be angry with me for being such a grandmother.

"Au revoir.

"Your very good cousin,

"DIANA LEYTON."

He crammed the letter into his pocket, and sat there, appalled. It must
have lain two days under that bust! Had Gyp seen it? He looked at the
bronze face; and the philosopher looked back from the hollows of his
eyes, as if to say: "What do you know of the human heart, my boy--your
own, your mistress's, that girl's, or anyone's? A pretty dance the heart
will lead you yet! Put it in a packet, tie it round with string, seal it
up, drop it in a drawer, lock the drawer! And to-morrow it will be out
and skipping on its wrappings. Ho! Ho!" And Summerhay thought: 'You old
goat. You never had one!' In the room above, Gyp would still be standing
as he had left her, putting the last touch to her hair--a man would be
a scoundrel who, even in thought, could--"Hallo!" the eyes of the
bust seemed to say. "Pity! That's queer, isn't it? Why not pity that
red-haired girl, with the skin so white that it burns you, and the eyes
so brown that they burn you--don't they?" Old Satan! Gyp had his heart;
no one in the world would ever take it from her!

And in the chair where she had sat last night conjuring up memories, he
too now conjured. How he had loved her, did love her! She would always
be what she was and had been to him. And the sage's mouth seemed to
twist before him with the words: "Quite so, my dear! But the heart's
very funny--very--capacious!" A tiny sound made him turn.

Little Gyp was standing in the doorway.

"Hallo!" he said.

"Hallo, Baryn!" She came flying to him, and he caught her up so that she
stood on his knees with the sunlight shining on her fluffed out hair.

"Well, Gipsy! Who's getting a tall girl?"

"I'm goin' to ride."

"Ho, ho!"

"Baryn, let's do Humpty-Dumpty!"

"All right; come on!" He rose and carried her upstairs.

Gyp was still doing one of those hundred things which occupy women for
a quarter of an hour after they are "quite ready," and at little Gyp's
shout of, "Humpty!" she suspended her needle to watch the sacred rite.

Summerhay had seated himself on the foot-rail of the bed, rounding his
arms, sinking his neck, blowing out his cheeks to simulate an egg; then,
w