gentlemen, after their cigars, followed the ladies into the
drawing-room, Keith found Mrs. Lancaster and Lois sitting together, a
little apart from the others, talking earnestly. He walked over and
joined them.

They had been talking of the incident of the picture, but stopped as he
came up.

"Now, Lois," said Mrs. Lancaster, gayly, "I have known Mr. Keith a long
time, and I give you one standing piece of advice. Don't believe one
word that he tells you; for he is the most insidious flatterer
that lives."

"On the contrary," said Keith, bowing and speaking gravely to the
younger girl, "I assure you that you may believe implicitly every word
that I tell you. I promise you in the beginning that I shall never tell
you anything but the truth as long as I live. It shall be my claim upon
your friendship."

"Thank you," said Lois, lifting her eyes to his face. Her color had
deepened a little at his earnest manner. "I love a palpable truth."

"You do not get it often in Society," said Mrs. Lancaster.

"I promise you that you shall always have it from me," said Keith.

"Thank you," she said again, quite earnestly, looking him calmly in the
eyes. "Then we shall always be friends."

"Always."

Just then Stirling came up and with a very flattering speech asked Miss
Huntington to sing.

"I hear you sing like a seraph," he declared.

"I thought they always cried," she said, smiling; then, with a
half-frightened look across toward her cousin, she sobered and declared
that she could not.

"I have been meaning to have her take lessons," said Mrs. Wentworth,
condescendingly, from her seat near by; "but I have not had time to
attend to it. She will sing very well when she takes lessons." She
resumed her conversation. Stirling was still pressing Miss Huntington,
and she was still excusing herself; declaring that she had no one to
play her accompaniments.

"Please help me," she said in an undertone to Keith. "I used to play
them myself, but Cousin Louise said I must not do that; that I must
always stand up to sing."

"Nonsense," said Keith. "You sha'n't sing if you do not wish to do so;
but let me tell you: there is a deed of record in my State conveying a
tract of land to a girl from an old gentleman on the expressed
consideration that she had sung 'Annie Laurie' for him when he asked her
to do it, without being begged."

She looked at him as if she had not heard, and then glanced at her
cousin.

"Either sing or don'